Trump’s winning message

THE first thing which needs to be said about Donald Trump is that despite all that has been said and written, he is no Ronald Reagan.

The late, much-admired 1980s President of the United States spent most of his life preparing for the White House as a trade union leader, a two-term governor of the US’s richest state California and political commentator and thinker for GE television.

By the time he arrived at the White House, his economic views were well-informed.

He was an advocate of lower taxes and laissez faire capitalism, and was prepared to take on the unions he once worked for.

Reagan bared his teeth almost immediately by sacking bolshie air traffic controllers. He drafted in US air force technicians rather than give in to economic blackmail.

Trump has none of that political sophistication and is the first presumptive nominee for a major party not to have held elected office since Dwight Eisenhower in 1956.

As a four-time bankrupt, Trump is even less qualified to run a country than the much disparaged BHS chief Dominic Chappell, twice bankrupt, once insolvent and most recently heard of chasing money in Vancouver. What Trump did more effectively than the dozen or so opponents who he blocked out of the Republican race was tap into a rich vein of dissatisfaction.

Two-thirds of Americans believe that the economy has been rigged in favour of Wall Street and the rich. And despite the recovery in the labour market, seven out of ten US citizens somehow think that Washington has fixed the economy against them.

In the period between the onset of the financial crisis in 2007 and 2014, the wages of ordinary American workers fell. Only on Wall Street and in the nation’s boardrooms have they soared.

Even though 160,000 people joined the US workforce in April, this was below expectations and enough to send the dollar lower against the euro and the yen in latest trading as another interest rate rise retreated into the distance.

This will be additional ammunition for the Trumpites.

In Britain, Ukip and others have found fodder in the traditional working class who feel they have been left at the bottom of the pile because of largely Eastern European immigration. In Trump’s world, the Mexican immigrants and the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico are easy targets for ‘suffering’ Americans.

Economic nationalism – or as some might call it protectionism – traditionally was the province of the Left and the Democrats in US politics.

Amid all the inconsistencies in Trump’s verbiage it is one of the few bits of policy which he has not changed his mind about over the years.

It wouldn’t matter to Britain if it were at the ‘back of the queue’ for a trade deal, as Barack Obama recently claimed, because in a Trump administration the line wouldn’t exist.

If being able to add up were a qualification for the White House then Trump wouldn’t stand a chance.

The billionaire is promising to pay off the US’s $19trillion of national debt over two terms in office, while pledging to cut taxes by $10trillion. Even the most rabid supply side economist couldn’t seriously buy into that.

But his vision of a simpler, flatter tax regime, for corporations and individuals, and the promise to repatriate billions of dollars parked offshore by US tech giants, has genuine resonance.

What Trump also has going for him is that although he is of New York he is not in hock to the bankers for his political progress.

This will be a potent weapon against Hillary Clinton if and when they get to the election proper. What would be foolish is to discount the Trump phenomenon and at the very least the way it will reshape the economic agenda.

Ignoring Main Street and sucking up to Wall Street will not be an option for the next US leader.

Tyrie neglect

ONE might have thought that the £21bn ‘merger of equals’ between Deutsche Boerse and the London Stock Exchange, one of the City’s greatest and most long-lived institutions, might be considered a matter of great urgency for Andrew Tyrie and the Treasury Select Committee.

It has almost everything: a foreign takeover of a great British asset, concerns that the Square Mile could be weakened and serious regulatory and stability implications. And it also straddles the Brexit debate.

Tyrie personally signalled last month that the deal was a matter of interest and a preliminary inquiry was under way.

Now the committee has placed it on the back burner.

DB and the LSE must think that after the withdrawal of New York Stock Exchange owner ICE from the fray, an end to the possibility of public hearings must mean all their chickens are coming home to roost.

It would be pathetic if the Commons were to allow German politicians and regulators to ask all the questions while MPs sit on their hands.

Shameful.