I see that a gang of twenty-three Nobel Prize (equivalent) winning economists think that Kamala’s economic policies are better than Trump’s. It is like an endorsement from white dudes for Harris, another win for Trump is the way to look at it. Unfortunately these economists are Keynesians and most certainly global warmists. For those not in the know this means, to paraphrase President Reagan, not so much that they are ignorant but that what they know ain’t so.

Apparently they don’t like tax cuts and tariffs. Of course, Trump’s deregulatory agenda gets not a mention. No surprise, they will be all big government guys. However, give them their due they have looked beneath Kamala’s word salads to discover, most imaginatively, that her policies will “strengthen the middle class, enhance competition, and promote entrepreneurship.” Who would have guessed? No clues given as to what these policies are by the way. But if you can’t trust Nobel-Prize winners who can you trust?

As in his first term, Trump has three main economic policies. Lower taxes on corporations and individuals; deregulation, including, importantly, deregulation of the energy sectors; and increased tariffs, most particularly on Chinese imports – from China or from its proxies, like Mexico. You can look at lower taxes and higher tariffs like a Keynesian where everything is static and set in BC; i.e., before China.

Lower taxes in a Keynesian mindset increase demand and can lead to inflation. It is a mechanical and myopic way to look at things. Lower taxes, particularly on businesses, and more particularly in a scenario in which regulations are removed or reduced, have a positive dynamic effect in increasing production and productivity, which dampens price rises. That ‘s what happened the first time around and it will happen the second time around.

Free trade maximises total world output. I don’t think there is much doubt about that. But vitally, this says nothing about how the gains from free trade are dispersed and it says nothing about consequential effects. Some of those effects in the United States have been the hollowing out of communities, regional unemployment, depression and despair, drug dependency and suicides, a fall in cultural richness that diversified industries bring, and dependency on foreign sources for strategically important materials and equipment. And all of this, which applies to varying extents in Europe and Australia too, has been hugely magnified by China over the past twenty-four years since Bill Clinton open the trade doors.

Free trade is a croc. It made sense in the eighteen and nineteenth centuries, not now. It is costing too much, much too much, to get tawdry cheap stuff from China. For Australia some of this price must be paid – though not all – because we are hitched to China. Got to sell that iron ore and those lobster tails. But the US is in a quite different position. Its population size, its vast land mass and plentiful resources, and its entrepreneurial spirit means that it can be self-sufficient and still very rich. Trump is an astute wheeler and dealer. He knows that China needs the US more than the US needs China.

If Trump wins buy US stocks. Deregulation, tax cuts and tariff walls will engender a surge in growth and profitability. Did I say, if Trump wins? He will surely win in a landslide unless the American voter has shifted holus-bolus to the dark stupid side. Which I don’t believe is the case. Or, of course, unless the morally bankrupt Dems have found new ways to cheat.