Business
- Charlie Biscotto
- Dec 13, 2016
- 2 min read
Over the weekend, Donald Trump slammed the Wall Street Journal, saying that they don't "understand business." This came in response to an editorial the WSJ published criticizing the signature victory of Trump's transition period: Carrier's decision to keep just under 1,000 jobs in Indiana that had previously been slated for a move to Mexico.
To say that an entire news organization doesn't understand business is pretty laughable on its face, but it's worth considering how many people of divergent views and backgrounds are united in the idea that the Carrier deal is bad policy. More importantly, what does Donald Trump's dismissal of criticism say about his presidency?
Tim Worstall for Forbes magazine pointed out that (decidedly left-of-center) economists Paul Krugman and Larry Summers were in agreement with (decidedly right-of center) economists Tyler Cowen and David Wessel in condemning the deal as an unwelcome intrusion into the free market. Their objections, mirroring the objections laid out in the Wall Street Journal, are that the deal gives ad hoc benefits to one company, disadvantaging its competitors who have not threatened to move jobs out of the country; that in doing so, it sews confusion about how rules will and won't be changed or bent; and that it sets America on a slippery slope to the kinds of self-enriching deal-making that have become hallmark of authoritarian leaders like Hugo Chavez and Vladimir Putin.
Summers's analysis for the Washington Post, cited and echoed elsewhere, concludes:
I fear in a way that is more fundamental than a bad tax policy or tariff we have started down the road of changing the operating assumptions of our capitalism. I hope I am wrong, but I expect that as a consequence we are going to be not only poorer but less free.
Writing also for Forbes, Adam Ozimek had more positive things to say. Sort of. Those positive things are that the Carrier deal, while bad policy unto itself, is a drop in the bucket and will have almost no major impact on the economy at-large, positive or negative, but will generate so much good publicity for Trump that he can be distracted by the resulting adoration and stay out of the way. So... there's that.
RedState's Patterico and one of Trump's own early endorsers and potential Cabinet secretaries, Sarah Palin, blasted the deal as crony capitalism, calling to mind Republican criticisms of Obama's intervention in the auto industry and solar energy (Donald Trump was notably silent on Wall Street Journal's business knowledge when it attacked the Obama administration's support of failed solar company Solyndra).
It was noted throughout the campaign that Donald Trump is easy to provoke, so it is no surprise that he felt compelled to respond to the Wall Street Journal's assessment, nor is it a surprise that he responded to substance without any of his own. When Jeb Bush brought real ideas to the GOP debate stage, he was "low-energy." When Hillary Clinton accused him of being a puppet for Vladimir Putin's interests (a claim harder and harder to deny by even the fiercest GOP partisans), his response was a childish, "You're the puppet." And when the Wall Street Journal criticizes his signature deal, they don't know anything about business.