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“People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought, which they avoid.”

Søren Kierkegaard

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Denial is a river in Egypt. Denial is also Trump’s superpower. He denies reality. Shamelessly denies what everyone can see. And in doing so he, well, lies all the time. About everything. It’s his ju jitsu act. And while I am going to talk economics, let me first point out that in this whole Trump ju jitsu shitfest, journalists are Trump’s best friend. Seriously. Why? Trump insanity gets normalized by journalists. Trump gets a free pass for his ignorance, lack of reality and non-seriousness. Journalists turn themselves into pretzels making his insanity normal sounding and his nonseriousness, and ignorance, sound serious and insightful. While Trump narrates a reality ju jitsu, anyone supporting him constantly performs narrative ju jitsu to make him sound sane (or even good for America).

Which leads me to the economic jiu jitsu.

It seems like the most common ju jitsu is that the Trump economy was great. And while many of the things that I’m about to say with regard to the economy will vary on an individual basis, the average community will be reflective of the facts and reality. Let’s set aside the pandemic period for now. The economy during the Trump administration was basically the same as during the Obama administration. And I’m even being a little generous there in that GDP growth was often a little bit lower, wages didn’t increase as much, and all of those things got compounded by some fairly negative aspects. I would also be a remiss if I didn’t point out because of all Trump and his administration’s blowhard hyperbole, we all seem to overlook that generally speaking inflation was exactly the same as it currently is under the Biden administration and it was about the same as the Obama administration. Also, just as during the Obama administration, prices were generally about 20% higher than the Bush administration years, the prices during the Trump administration years were about 20% higher than during the Obama years. Yeah. Cost of living increases – all the time. Remember, this is non-pandemic comparisons. So let’s move to unemployment. The reality is anything under 5% is basically full employment and reflects some healthy natural employment churn. That said. It is absolutely reflective of unemployment lower than 5% that employment will increase among minority groups. As jobs increase employers need employees and oftentimes they will broaden their scope of their search. Minorities benefit there. This is also true because labor participation was basically the same between Trump and Obama years (and Biden years) so the employee pie was about the same. But my point would be is, generally speaking, the Trump Administration economic years were not spectacular; just relatively good – at least from a vanity metric standpoint. I mention the vanity metric point because all of this this overlooks how the Trump Administration made the economy work.

“Trump shows he has no desire to be transformational or even to shape the future, he favors only transactional relationships dealing on the basis of cost–benefit calculations as to how each deal works in America’s perceived economic or political interests.”

This is important because you can make an economy look good in the present and, yet, be doing little to build an economic structure for the future (as a note: the Obama administration never got enough credit for that). Anyway. The Trump administration used a complex jujitsu system wherein they would layer a depth and breadth of tariffs on all countries, not just China, including our allies, and then they turned around to subsidize many of the American industries to help them compensate for having to pay those tariffs. That warped methodology had two consequences. First consequence was it ballooned the debt and the deficit without a corresponding economic growth. What I mean by that is that we spend a lot of money simply to overcome a horrible policy and not to spur growth. The second consequence was while the Trump Administration always argued that the heavy tariffs would encourage an America first manufacturing boom, it didn’t occur. And while there were many reasons, I will just focus on this particular part of the policy in that there was no incentive for American companies to invest in building out because they were receiving government subsidies to maintain the status quo and reap the profits. If that sounds as stupid a policy as it sounds; it is. So, there was no particularly great economic growth, there wasn’t any particular business expansion, and while most Americans were relatively comfortable because we maintained the financial status quo, American lives certainly weren’t progressing.

Which leads me to the pandemic and its effect on the economy.

We all lived through that time. It was horrible for people, but many large institutions made a shitload of money. Regardless, the pandemic shook the entire economic etch of sketch. Let me digress a moment because I feel a need to ask a question here because currently the American economy, its business growth, it’s household income growth, and the basic solid fundamentals of the economy is the envy of the world. Throughout the pandemic the American economy maintained a solid footing significantly better than any country in the world and while inflation increased significantly it didn’t increase to the level of any other country in the world. So, by any measurement whatever the Biden administration was doing was working. The pandemic, economically, for people was a painful time and I imagine it’s difficult when in pain to envision that it could actually be worse, but it could have been, i.e., scan the world’s countries.

Which leads me to my question: does anybody really believe that Trump and his clown car administration would have managed the pandemic economy either during the pandemic or coming out of the pandemic better than we did?

Seriously. Does anyone not believe he would actually try the same crazy shit China is doing right now to save their economy (short term bullshit rather than longer term fundamentals)? Oh. Does anybody not believe that Trump would have spent hours in front of cameras blaming China for any and all of the economic problems that America had (assuming no responsibility and assuming a ‘victim of’ mentality)? Does anyone truly believe Trump, himself, understands how an economy works? The amateur economist Trump administration (of which there are none who support anything the Biden administration actually did) would have flailed about pulling all the levers they could to create at least one vanity measurement they could point to to suggest that we were not going over a cliff. In comparison the Biden administration kept its head down, went about their business of crafting a healthy economy, and actually rescrambled the entire economic etch a sketch. They saw it as an emergent opportunity to reconfigure supply chains, to invest in American manufacturing, and building and creating a solid infrastructure for the economy moving forward. As a result, the economy, the results, and the structure itself is probably stronger than it has been since possibly World War Two. We are building, we are growing, we are investing, and there were more new small business licenses issued during the Biden administration then the Trump administration by far. To reprise my main point in this section – does anyone truly believe Trump and his administration would have managed this to a better economic place? Oh. And while we complain about inflation and the cost of living, the pandemic did play a pretty significant role in where we are today. It kind of releveled the pricing playing field. I still believe we are facing what I would consider pandemic pricing. Businesses learned a lot about what people were willing to pay and most of those companies have no desire to reduce their prices now that inflation is low again.

Which leads me to the fundamentals of this ju jitsu.

Trump lies. He lies relentlessly and shamelessly. Therein lies the underpinnings of his economic ju jitsu. He states so confidently his economy was the best, and the current is the worst, that a shitload of people don’t know what to believe. Part of his ju jitsu magic resides in his hyperbolic confidence with regard to his own smarts (stable genius, big brain, etc.). This is truly ju jitsu because while he is a masterclass hyperbolic salesman, he doesn’t know shit about how a business is run let alone how an economy works. Don’t believe me? My newest proof point is the interview he just did with Bloomberg on the economy. I encourage everyone to watch. He doesn’t understand how an economy works let alone how economic tactics work. Regardless. Even within the fundamental lie structure in his ju jitsu narrative, he needs something else to undergird the lies – an enemy.

Which leads me to the enemy within ju jitsu.

The feelings of economic wellbeing in the present translates into economic fears, or hopes, for the future. Tucked within that is the sense of an “on-off” valve. What I mean by that is if you don’t feel good about the present, there is a subtle sense that something, or someone, is keeping the valve “off” from that wellbeing. Someone like Trump preys on that and begins the ju jitsu that there are American citizens purposefully holding the valve off. They would be, well, the enemy. Uhm. Someone to hate. Some group has to be blamed for all the troubles the leader’s supporters feels they are suffering (whether it is real or not). Trump has a complex mix of deplorable, non-deplorables, demonizing immigrants, the media (whose job is to hold him accountable publicly), and all Democrats, deflecting his own shortcomings by blaming these groups for undermining him . creating the ultimate mental ju jitsu that all of them are undermining “you” and, worse, they embody true evil. In their unification against this evil enemy, true believers will support their leader no matter how outrageous his behavior gets (even including “eating dogs and cats). I wish I could say this ju jitsu is craftmanship, but it is fundamentally idiotic and utterly insane. It is not just rhetoric ju jitsu, it is a dangerous mix of business fraud, lawlessness, amoral or unethical winner-take-all and authoritarian behavior.

Which leads me back to the economy.

Facts. Inflation continues to fall and is now back to levels of even the Trump administration. The Federal Reserve is cutting interest rates (reflecting a decline in inflation). Job growth under the Biden administration continues to grow (under Trump we lost net jobs). While Trump falsely espouses “100%” of all new jobs created under Biden “have gone to illegal immigrants,” the number of native-born Americans in the workforce increased by 6% under Biden. The crime rate is down, violent crime reduced by 15.2% in just the last year, according to the FBI. The entry of migrants at the southern border between December 2023 and January 2024 fell by 50% as a result of actions of the Mexican government in cooperation with the Biden administration, and crossings fell even more, by 40%, to their lowest level in four years, as a result of Biden’s executive order on asylum policy in June. Immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans (the average 25-year-old male from Latin America is less likely to commit a crime than a 25-year-old white male). 48% of immigrants arriving between 2020 and 2022 have at least a bachelor’s degree, while 38% of native-born Americans have a bachelor’s degree. But let me close on the economy that Trump seems to deny. The Biden administration has crafted a historic economic recovery with strong growth, very low unemployment, and inflation returning to normal. It is, and has been, focused on lowering costs for all people and expanding the economy. That strong economy at home is simultaneously helping to power the global economy and strengthening domestic economic resilience.

“We have not come this far without a struggle and I assure you we cannot go further without a struggle. We know now that government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob.”

FDR

In the end, Trump has always been a grifter and always has believed in ‘government by organized money (the wealthy)’, therefore, Trump needs all the alternative reality ju jitsu he can muster because (a) he must convince blue collar America he is for them, (b) he must scrape up every possible voter with some grievance and (c) convince people the economic reality doesn’t exist. He will never reach a 50% majority. His ceiling is maybe 36% of adults (47% of voting adults). He will certainly lose the popular vote by millions as he did in 2016 and 2020. The only way Trump can win is by inflaming people into believing losing is losing to some alternative universe evil through some ju jitsu where fellow citizens are evil and the America we see today is in some economic shithole. Ponder.