Trump’s economic losers
It is an old saw of Republican economics: The federal government in Washington ought not pick winners and losers. That’s socialism or cronyism or, when President Obama played footsie with Solyndra, a mix of both, with a sprinkling of scandal. Late last year, Trump Environmental Protection Agency boss Scott Pruitt explained why he was abandoning his predecessor’s Clean Power Plan, designed to reduce carbon emissions from power plants: “They were using every bit of power (and) authority to use the EPA to pick winners and losers on how we generate electricity in this country. That is wrong.”
Proving hypocrisy is an endlessly renewable energy, President Trump Friday directed his Energy Department to take “immediate steps” to prop up struggling coal and nuclear power plants, as his administration mulls a broader plan to order those who run the country’s power grid to buy electricity from these sources. They’re limping in the marketplace, so Trump will rush to the rescue, forcing ratepayers — that’s you — to pay through the nose.
Since when is command-and-control conservative? Since when is corporate welfare on a massive scale consistent with economic freedom?
What might gall even more is the pretext for a move that is, by all accounts, an open favor by a President who promised to save coal, a fuel in decline primarily due to market forces: The draft plan claims the cash infusion would be necessary to protect national security.
Conveniently, this is the same rationale behind another destructive form of economic meddling back in vogue: a rash of tariffs, justified under a 1962 law giving the President power to hike the price of goods deemed critical to national security.
Trump slapped the import duties on steel and aluminum from close allies including Canada, Mexico and the European Union after dithering for the better part of a month. Even American steelworkers balked — at least at the tariffs focused on Canada, our number-one source of imported steel, as economists universally panned the move.
They realize that jobs are sure to be lost by industries forced to pay more for core materials, much as newspapers are suffering from senseless newsprint tariffs.
They fear retaliatory counter-tariffs will hammer American agriculture, as entire nations start looking elsewhere for their soy, pork and more.
Trumped-up duties on imported luxury cars are said to be next, under the very same national security pretext.
They do this with a straight face.