Next year, if things continue in the direction they're going now, I believe we'll have a landslide win. On the other hand if prices come down, employment is good, in short people believe his ideas are actually working, then it's a different matter. I hate to wish something negative on the country, but if things are good he'll have a chance to not lose Congress.
Frankly, I believe the Supreme Court will have a lot to say in the next year. While they've been allowing him to operate while his actions are challenged in lower court and they essentially say, let him continue until we consider the case, I believe they'll find against him in most cases. I'm not saying that he can't do the things he's done, but rather it requires Congressional approval. I don't believe he can get it. Even his tariffs may end up being cancelled if Congress doesn't approve them. In short, we're a nation of laws which he's run roughshod over, but eventually the courts will say no, and it will be the Supremes that finally do so.
Trump has managed to essentially blackmail Americas wealthiest corporations, a threat from him right out in the open yields tens or hundreds of millions to the treasury, or to his library, or to things like the ballroom. My point is that fear is hard to overcome. Trump may not win many court cases, but our major corporations would rather pay him than either being taken to court, or just hearing his wrath.
We need to educate the electorate. I wonder how many would vote for tariffs if they really understood that they were paying them. He speaks as though the countries he tariffs pay them to keep their prices down, clearly they don't, the price goes up, but some still believe he knows what he's talking about.
I'm all for American manufacturing, if we do it right. Right means building modern plants, something like what Musk has done with Tesla. They don't employ a lot of people as robots do a great deal of the work. Do that and we can make things competitively. If we build a plant that lacks such automation, then our costs are dramatically higher for the same thing and either they don't sell, or tariffs must be used against the competition. We lead the world in selling services that we're paid for, that's where we need to stay, not everything can be built, or grown here, that needs to be considered and we need to work on balancing trade.
Our greatest investment should be in making things better, staying the world leader in innovation. I'd have the equivalent of a Manhattan Project working on things like using carbon nanotubes in all sorts of applications. Why? Because if we could use them in mass production they'd be superior to all sorts of other technologies in making everything from computer chips to flat screens, wire, etc. etc.etc. They're faster, us less power, stronger, and to a large extent they eliminate or greatly lessen our need for many of the rare earth elements, etc. What would people think about electric cars that got say 10,000 miles on a full charge. With C-N-T batteries of the same size as todays car batteries, they could probably do it. They won't, if they had them the batteries would be smaller, cheaper, and they'd give 1000 miles a charge, who's going to complain about that. We slowly evolve battery technology when with a little more effort we could make a quantum change.
Gary |
