Donald Trump won election as
our next President partly by appealing to Americans who are unhappy with the
way the economy has left them behind, while benefitting only the wealthy.
Nearly all Americans told
pollsters just before the election that they think the American economy is rigged in
favor of the powerful. Almost 90% said the economy is rigged to benefit the
rich generally, banks and bank executives in particular, and corporations.
Trump
told these angry voters that they were right: middle-class Americans can't
get ahead, because big political donors, big businesses and big bureaucrats are
keeping wages down and hogging all the gains of the growing economy for
themselves. Only
he could fix this broken system. “The economy is rigged. The banking system
is rigged. There’s a lot of things that are rigged in this world of ours, and
that’s why a lot of you haven’t had an effective wage increase in 20 years,
folks. And we’re going to change it.”
Trump specifically pointed
the finger at Wall St. He told
an audience in Ottumwa, Iowa, “I know the people on Wall Street. I'm not
going to let Wall Street get away with murder. Wall Street has caused
tremendous problems for us. I don’t care about the Wall Street guys. I’m not
taking any of their money.” He stressed the unfairness of the tax system. “The
hedge fund guys are getting away with murder. They're
paying nothing, and it's ridiculous.”
Now that he has won election
with those arguments, Trump has been assembling his team to run the government.
His cabinet choices are not yet complete, and none of them have been confirmed
by the Senate. But his selections so far give us some idea of what he plans to
do.
Trump’s cabinet will be the
richest group in American history, dominated by the very people he criticized
on the campaign trail. For Secretary of Commerce, Trump is nominating Wilbur L.
Ross Jr., a billionaire Wall St. speculator. He owned Sago Mine, a West
Virginia coal mine where a dozen miners lost their lives in a 2006 explosion.
His company settled a lawsuit for negligence in their deaths. A few months ago,
Ross’s company paid a $2.3 million fine for charging
his investors excess management fees.
Just under Ross, Trump is
nominating Todd
Ricketts as Deputy Commerce Secretary. His father founded the online broker
Ameritrade. Ricketts is even richer than Ross, and is co-owner of the Chicago
Cubs and CEO of Ending Spending, an organization “dedicated to educating and
engaging American taxpayers about wasteful and excessive government spending,”
according to its site.
As head of the Small Business
Administration, Trump selected another billionaire, Linda McMahon, former chief
executive of World Wrestling Entertainment, and one of Trump’s biggest donors. The
Treasury Department will be headed by
Steven Mnuchin, another
big donor and a former Goldman Sachs executive, now CEO of a hedge fund. He
is worth only about $665 million.
Much further down the list of
richest Americans, Trump’s Secretary of Labor will be Andrew F. Puzder, chief
executive of CKE Restaurants, which owns fast-food outlets Hardee’s and Carl’s
Jr. Puzder opposes
increasing the minimum wage, because his restaurants would have to pay more
to their workers, meaning less income for shareholders.
Another billionaire with
input into Trump’s economic policies will be Carl Icahn, a Special Adviser on
Regulatory Reform. Icahn began as a stockbroker and now is one of the richest
Americans, buying and selling companies and a business partner with Trump.
Another cabinet secretary who
is worth billions will be Betsy DeVos, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of
Education, whose family started the multilevel marketing company Amway. Amway
has been successfully sued in the US, Canada and the United Kingdom for fraud,
and has paid
millions in fines.
Rex W. Tillerson will head
Trump’s State Dept. He was president and chief executive of Exxon Mobil, and
will get a severance package worth $180
million for leaving his job. Some other
billionaires have been appointed by Trump to serve on his economic advisory
committee or inaugural committee.
The Republican-dominated
Senate appears to be rushing the process of confirming these nominations. They
have scheduled six
hearings for this Wednesday, apparently hoping to minimize media scrutiny. Several
of Trump’s picks have not completed the usual vetting process, which includes
tax returns and ethics clearances, which might be complicated for some of the
billionaires with vast financial holdings. The head of the Office of Government
Ethics, Walter M. Shaub Jr., has said that the Senate
has never before held hearings before his office completed its review.
We don’t know yet exactly
what policies Trump will direct his cabinet to implement, or even if they all
will be confirmed. This is what we do know: none of them have shown the
slightest interest in the economic plight of the voters who backed Trump. They
are precisely the people who have profited the most from the financial system
that Trump said was rigged against most Americans.
Trump not only took plenty of
money from the Wall St. Guys. Now he is hiring them to run the government.
Steve Hochstadt
Jacksonville IL
Published in the Jacksonville
Journal-Courier, January 10, 2017
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