Letters from an American - December 17, 2024

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

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December 17th, 2024. Yesterday, Trump gave his first press conference since the election. It was exactly what Trump's public performances always are, attention-grabbing threats alongside lies and very little apparent understanding of actual issues. His mix of outrageous and threatening is central to his politics, though. It keeps him central to the media. Even though, as Josh Marshall pointed out in Talking Points memo on December 13th, he often claims a right to do something he knows very little about and

has no power to accomplish. The uncertainty he creates is key to his power, Marshall notes. It keeps everyone off balance and focused on him in anticipation of trouble to come. At the same time, it seems increasingly clear that the wealthy leaders who backed Trump's reelection are not terribly concerned about his threats.

They seem to see him as a figurehead rather than a policy leader. They're counting on him to deliver more tax cuts and deregulation, but apparently are dismissing his campaign vows to raise tariffs and deport immigrants as mere rhetoric. As the promised tax cuts are already under discussion, interested parties are turning to deregulation. Suzanne Rust and Ian James of the Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday that on December 5th, more than 100 industrial trade groups signed a 21-page letter to Trump complaining that regulations are strangling our economy. They urged him to gut Biden-era regulations and instead to partner with manufacturers to create workable

regulations that achieve important policy goals without imposing overly burdensome and impractical requirements on our sector. They single out reductions in air quality, water quality, chemical, vehicle, and power plant environmental regulations as important for their industries. They also call for ending the regulatory overreach of the Biden administration on labor rules, saying those rules threaten the employer-employee relationship and harm manufacturers' global competitiveness. They want an end to right-to-repair laws,

a loosening of the rules for how and when companies need to report cyber incidents, and the replacement of mandated consumer product safety rules with voluntary standards. They also call for cuts to the Biden administration's antitrust efforts and for looser corporate finance regulations. On December 12th, Gina Hebe reported in the Wall Street Journal that Trump's advisors are exploring ways to dramatically shrink, consolidate, or even eliminate the top bank watchdogs in Washington, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC. As Catherine Rampel explained in the Washington Post today, Congress created the FDIC in 1933

to protect bank deposits so that a bank's customers can trust that mismanaged banks won't lose their money. The FDIC also oversees those banks so that they are less likely to get into trouble in the first place. Congress created the system after people rushing to get their money out before a collapse actually created the very collapse that they feared, with one bank failure creating another in a domino effect that dug the economy even further into the crisis it was in after the Great Crash. But the insurance money for those banks comes from fees assessed on the banks

themselves, so abolishing the FDIC would save the bank's money. When he learned that Trump's advisors are eyeing cuts to the FDIC, Princeton history professor Kevin Cruz commented, when I lecture about New Deal banking reforms I note that some of the key measures like Glass-Steagall were repealed by the right with disastrous results like the 2008 financial meltdown but ha ha no one will ever be stupid enough to kill FDIC and bring back the old bank runs. Ben Guggenheim of Politico was the first to report that 29 Republican members of Congress are also quick off the blocks in getting into the act of promoting private industry, calling for the incoming president to end the program of the Internal Revenue Service that lets

people file their taxes directly without using a private tax preparer. Other developed countries use a similar system, but in the U.S. private tax preparers staunchly oppose the public system. When more than 140,000 people used the IRS pilot program this year, they saved an estimated $6.5 million. Republicans called for its end, warning it is, a threat to taxpayers' freedom from government overreach.

But for all their faith that Trump will deregulate the economy, economic leaders seem to think his other promises were just rhetoric. Ben Schwartz of the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that business executives have been lobbying Trump to change his declared plans on tariffs. The president-elect has vowed to place tariffs of 25 percent on products from Canada and Mexico and of an additional 10 percent on products from China. He claims to believe that other countries will pay these tariffs, but in fact U.S. consumers

will pay them. That, plus the fact that other countries will almost certainly respond with their own tariffs against U.S. products, makes economists warn that Trump's plans will hurt the economy, with both inflation and trade wars. Schwarz reported that some companies and some Republicans are hoping that Trump's tariff threats are simply a bargaining tactic. Trump supporters say something similar about his vow to deport 11 to 20 million undocumented immigrants,

hoping he won't actually go after long-term, hard-working undocumented people. On December 10th, Jack Dolan reported in the Los Angeles Times that the resort town of Mammoth Lakes, California depends on migrant labor. And on December 15th, Eli Sazlo and Aaron Schaaf of the New York Times reported the story of an undocumented worker brought to the US as an infant who is now trying to figure out his future after his beloved father-in-law voted for Trump.

Two days ago, CNN reported on Trump supporting dairy farmers in South Dakota who depend on undocumented workers, insisting that Trump will not round up undocumented immigrants no matter what he says. One person who is not discounting Trump's threats is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican of Kentucky. McConnell will give up his leadership position in January and has told his colleagues he feels liberated. McConnell appears to be taking a stand against Trump's expected appointee for Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy speaks often against vaccines. And after the New York Times reported that the lawyer working with Kennedy

to vet his potential HHS staff petitioned federal regulators to take the polio vaccine off the market, McConnell, a polio survivor, warned, efforts to undermine the public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed, they're dangerous. Anyone seeking the Senate's consent to serve in the incoming administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts.

McConnell has also been vocal about his opposition to Trump's isolationism. He is a champion of sending military support to Ukraine and, after he steps down from the leadership, will chair the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, the subcommittee that controls military spending. America's national security interests face the gravest array of threats since the Second World War, McConnell says. At this crucial moment, a new Senate Republican majority has a responsibility to secure the future of U.S. leadership and primacy. McConnell will also chair the Rules Committee, which gives him a chance to stop MAGA senators

from trying to abandon the power of the Senate and permit Trump to get his way. McConnell has said that defending the Senate as an institution and protecting the right to political speech in our elections remain among my longest standing priorities. That last sentence identifies the current struggle in the Republican Party. McConnell is showing his willingness to prevent Trump and MAGA Republicans from bulldozing their way through the Senate in order to undermine the Departments of Justice, Defense, and Health and Human Services, among others. But when he talks about protecting the right to political speech in our elections, he's talking about protecting the Supreme Court's

2010 Citizens United decision that permits corporations and wealthy individuals to flood our elections and thus our political system with money. It is those corporations and wealthy individuals who are now lining up for tax cuts and deregulation, but who don't want the tariffs or mass deportations or isolationism Trump's America First MAGA base wants. Trump and his team have been talking about their election win as a mandate and a landslide, but it was actually a razor thin victory with more voters choosing someone other than Trump than voting for him. He will need the support of establishment

Republicans in the Senate to put his MAGA policies in place. At yesterday's press conference he appeared to be nodding to McConnell when he promised, you're not going to lose the polio vaccine. That's not going to happen. McConnell's fierce use of power in the past suggests that the Senate's giving up its constitutional power to bend to Trump's will isn't likely to happen either. Letters from an American was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dedham, Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.