Donald Trump and the Politics of Fantasy

Robert A. Manning

Politics, Americas

On the economy and the military, Trump's promises are little more than bluster.

Amid all the “gotcha” journalism fueling this reality TV show masquerading as the Republican primary, Donald Trump’s fact-starved pronouncements on the U.S. economy and military remain insufficiently challenged.

“The country is a mess” is one of many tools Trump uses to stir the angry populist pot. He pulls figures from thin air, claiming that real unemployment in the United States is not 4.9 percent, but may be as high as 42 percent. America is being “beaten” by everyone—China, Japan, Mexico, etc.

Really? Please name one—just one—economy in the world that he would trade the U.S. economy for. Go ahead, make my day.

In fact, notwithstanding a tepid recovery from the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, the U.S. economy is by far the best positioned of any nation in the OECD. It is well ahead of other G-7 economies. By any measure—be it global competitiveness, growth in manufacturing courtesy of the shale revolution and cheap natural gas, innovation, energy production, quality of universities—the United States remains the world’s largest and one of the most dynamic economies.

Xi Jinping would trade his economy for Obama’s in a heartbeat. The same for François Hollande in France or David Cameron in the UK.

Trump charges that the U.S. military is a run-down mess that only he can “rebuild.” What military in the world would he trade the U.S. military for? What other military even comes close in air, land, sea, space and cyber capabilities?

Trump insists, “We’re gonna make our military so big and so strong and so great… Nobody’s gonna mess with us.” Despite the ill-advised budget sequestration adopted by the Republican Congress, the U.S. military budget of $585 billion in FY 2016 ($582 billion proposed for FY 2017) is still larger than the next eight military budgets combined. The military budget more than doubled from $316 billion to $666 billion in FY 2009.