If Donald Trump wins the presidential election in November, I predict he and his Vice President, JD Vance, will be dead within 18 months of their inaugurations.

I expect Trump will suspend the Constitution on Day 1 of his presidency, just like he promised.  He has also stated he will invoke the Insurrection Act. This allows him to use the military against “the enemies within”. Trump will believe he is untouchable. He won’t be.

Dictatorships aren’t all they are hyped up to be. The problem with a dictatorship is, if citizens want to get rid of a blundering dictator, their options are limited. Typically, incompetent dictators meet an unfortunate end.

The Supreme Court gave Trump enough rope to hang himself, literally. Without guardrails, Trump will create a disaster. John Bolton, one of Trump’s first term National Security Advisors summed things up well when he noted, “Donald Trump is too stupid to be a dictator”.

Trump sows violence and hatred and he will reap the harvest. Trump may be assassinated by a military or law enforcement person (or persons) that swore to uphold and protect the Constitution. Or, it could be any number of people impacted by Trump’s hatred.

Suspending the Constitution will make Trump a “dead man walking”. His domestic and foreign blunders will speed the process.

Before going further, Frugal Ron abhors violence and is not advocating Trump’s assassination. I’m merely predicting it.

Food riots?

Of all the dumb things Trump has said, written and done, his mass deportation plan is the absolute stupidest and most dangerous.  Put simply as an equation: No undocumented immigrants = No food in grocery stores. Illegal immigrants are the foundation of our entire food production and processing system. Forget about blaming President Joe Biden for high grocery prices. Deport all undocumented workers and deal with no food.

Undocumented immigrants plant, weed and harvest almost all the food we eat. No one else is going to do the backbreaking hand harvest from dawn to dark in the heat, sun, and rain of crops like strawberries, lettuce and a long list of other foods. These crops have a narrow harvest window. If they aren’t harvested when ready, they’ll rot in the field.

Crops like carrots and potatoes are more mechanized. But, they are still dependent on illegal workers for cleaning and processing. Even super mechanized crops like corn and soybeans rely on seasonal undocumented workers for planting, and especially harvest. Regardless of the crop, whenever there is a miserable, dirty, dangerous and demanding job, illegal immigrants are doing it.

Presently, some seasonal workers can legally work in the US using the H2A program. In the interest of racial purity, I expect Trump will compound his problems by abolishing that program.

Meat and cheese eaters

If your diet revolves around meat and dairy, get used to change. Turkey, chicken, beef, pork and sheep processing plants are reliant on illegal immigrants. These jobs have high turnover and need a steady influx of new migrants to keep operating. Deport the immigrants they employ now, and these plants shut down.

If Trump is elected, it will be ironic when  large dairy operators with huge “Trump In ‘24” signs look up after the election and see INS agents surrounding their operations and hauling off 95 percent of their labor force . The lesson here; be careful what you vote for.

Even with a “flood” of illegal workers, fast food restaurants are constantly dealing with labor shortages. Imagine if illegal immigrants are gone?

Undocumented immigrants are essential throughout our economy. If they are deported, who is going to empty Aunt Mabel’s bed pan in her nursing home? Who is going to clean your hotel room?  Who is going to drive the taxi or Uber that picks you up at the airport?

Trump plans on building giant camps to concentrate immigrants before deporting them. Good luck finding construction crews in the south-west if illegal immigrants are excluded. I haven’t a clue how many other industries are dependent on undocumented workers. After they are deported, we’ll find out in a hurry.

How can I be so sure undocumented workers are doing these miserable jobs? That’s easy. In a full employment economy like we have now, if workers are here legally and have decent English skills, they are doing something else.

Eventually, most of the jobs that disappeared when immigrants were deported will be filled.  However, farmers and others won’t hire legal citizens for anywhere near what they pay undocumented immigrants. This will increase inflationary pressure.

Bring on Trump’s Recession II!

Besides doing our worst jobs, illegal immigrants take the money they earn and buy goods and services. Buying stuff creates more jobs. Deport construction workers and companies layoff workers that make everything from lumber to drywall. When these workers have much less money to spend on goods and services, more people are laid off in a ripple effect. This is just reversing what happened over the last four years as the Biden economy surged by adding consumers (illegal immigrants) that created more jobs.

If illegal immigrants were wrecking our economy (as Trump and Vance claim), we wouldn’t have…

• Far above average GDP growth (In contrast, Trump’s inflation adjusted GDP growth was the lowest since records were kept.)
• The largest number of people working in US history along with far above average increase in job creation. (Trump is the only president that lost net jobs during his term since records were kept.)
• The largest number of people employed in history.
• The highest stock market ever.
• The highest inflation adjusted average wages ever.
• Annual inflation at 2.4 percent and falling.
• Rapidly falling interest rates.

Source material for the above at https://www.frugalron.com/the-strongest-economy-in-us-history/

Conversely, take 11-21 million consumers out of an economy and you just created a recession.

It gets worse

Trump and Republicans want to make America white again. So, getting rid of brown skinned illegal immigrants is a priority. However, I’ve lived and worked around Republicans most of my life. Republicans’ real passion is making life miserable for Black people.

Republicans will tell you there is no such thing as racism. The problem is that Black people are too lazy to work and instead perpetually live off government welfare, paid for by white taxpayers.

Note: A quick fact check. People cannot receive welfare benefits indefinitely. Federal programs have a 60-month lifetime limit and some states have shorter limits. Recipients are expected to find work within three years of starting to receive benefits. Single parents must work at least 30 hours/week and two parent families must work at least 35 hours/week. According to the Urban Institute, about half of families leave the welfare system in one year, 70 percent within two years and almost 90 percent within five years.

Republicans’ solution is to eliminate all government safety net programs. They tried and failed to do this in negotiations to increase the debt ceiling in 2023. Republicans are holding up passage of a new farm bill because of their demands to eliminate food stamps. https://www.frugalron.com/the-republican-deficit-reduction-fiasco/  Getting rid of safety net programs will be an extremely high priority for Republicans, if Trump is in office.

The problem is, eliminating these programs creates even more recessionary pressure. If welfare recipients aren’t spending money, this means more layoffs. Add in the ripple impact repeated from above, and you have more job losses throughout the economy. All this leads to a deeper and longer recession.

Don’t get sick or injured!

Eliminating Obamacare and Medicaid will create chaos in the health care industry. Rural hospital closings will happen first. Most are already in precarious financial shape.

Next, you will see extremely large increases in employer sponsored health insurance premiums. Without income from Medicaid and Obamacare, costs are shifted to people with private insurance. With Obamacare mandates gone, most employers will drop health insurance premium sharing with employees. This will put us back to where we were in 2008.

Cutting safety net programs will also adversely impact low income white Republicans. However, from years of experience living around these folks, most will be perfectly happy as long as they are convinced Black people are hurting more from the cuts than they are

The bottom line, cutting safety net programs will create an even worse recession since money from these programs is not being spent on goods and services. Less goods and service purchases equals more job layoffs.

And, there is more…

Trump’s economic plan centers around dramatically raising tariffs on imported goods. This will be the main driver of increased inflation during Trump’s reign.

Tariffs or like a tax. They will raise prices to consumers and manufacturers. Domestic producers will raise their prices to match the new tariff enhanced prices. They will do this because they can. All this is inflationary.

It gets worse. The tariffs will make the recession described above longer and deeper.

Tariffs are a direct tax on consumers. Let’s say Sally is  making $60,000 a year after taxes. She will buy roughly $60,000 of goods and services annually. However, because the tariffs are passed onto Sally and paid by her, the $60,000 she has to spend won’t buy as much stuff.

If Sally isn’t buying as many goods and services, more US workers will be laid off. Consumers, like Sally, can’t afford as much as they could before the tariffs.

Again, we have the same ripple affect on other workers as above. If Sally can’t afford her health club membership because of the tariffs (taxes), she’ll drop it. Because the health club is losing members, Joe is fired. Joe cuts his purchases dramatically and this goes on and on in the economy and creates a serious recession. All brought on by Dictator Donald Trump.

Reciprocating tariffs

Other countries will not sit still when Trump raises tariffs. In Trump’s first term, other countries imposed reciprocating tariffs on our exports, especially agricultural ones. This was devastating to farmers and caused a surge in bankruptcies and suicides.

Trump is planning much larger tariffs. The reciprocating tariffs will then also be more severe.

These tariffs will hurt US manufacturers. they will pay higher costs for their imported materials and have to compete internationally with manufacturers in other countries that don’t have high tariffs raising their costs.

Large tariffs are highly  inflationary. They will create shortages. They will contribute to Trump’s recession  because consumers will be spending money on tariffs instead of buying more goods and services.

At the same time, Trump promises large cuts to rich people’s taxes. We learned in his first administration these tax cuts simply transfer into much larger deficits. Add in the increased deficits because of his recession and deficits will reach new highs.

Where things get ugly…

Currently the US GDP is $29 trillion. The US government owes $35 trillion. ($8 trillion of that is from Trump’s first term.)

Many economists consider it a tipping point when a country’s debt is larger than its GDP. At that point, a country can no longer borrow and the economy goes into a free fall.

That hasn’t happened, yet. The US has a stable Federal Reserve and the dollar is the foundation of the international monetary system. However, there are limits to how long this can be forestalled. Te US already had its credit rating dropped because of Republican shenanigans around raising the US debt limit earlier this year.

Currently, it looks like the US’s 2024 calendar year deficit will come in around $2 trillion. (This is bad, but better than the$3 trillion deficit Trump left us with in 2020).

There are lots of variables here, but estimates of what Trump is proposing would increase our national debt by  $7.5 to $15.2 trillion over ten years. https://time.com/7055327/us-debt-harris-trump/

If we take a midpoint of $11 trillion and divide that by 10 to get an annual debt increase, we are at an additional $1.1 trillion above the current $2 trillion annual deficit. This is really bad.

It is highly likely (as explained above) that deporting 11-21 million consumers, taking the safety net program income out of the economy and the impact of Trump’s tariffs and reciprocal tariffs and ripple effects on the economy will result in a severe recession.

The impact of Trump’s recession could easily  double our projected $3.1 trillion deficit. GDP growth was close to stagnant during Trump’s first term.  We would be lucky if that happened with what Trump has planned. Obviously, the US government’s debt to GDP ratio is much more precarious if this happens. I’m not predicting a default , but…

Did we forget about inflation?

Deporting illegal immigrants will cause food shortages. After we get over that, food and many other prices will stay much higher because employers will have to pay native Americans much higher salaries than they paid undocumented workers. This will increase inflation.

The biggest driver of inflation will be Trump’s tariff plan. Put the two of these together and we easily could have double digit inflation.

Combining Trump’s projected disasters

Trump’s planned policies could easily bring us a severe and long recession, a cataclysmic debt crisis and hyper-inflation.

Trump also plans to put the Federal Reserve under his control. Combine all this and Venezuela starts to look like a stable economy in comparison.

Did Frugal Ron lose it?

Is all this doom and gloom simply a product of Frugal Ron’s revulsion of Donald Trump? Is he the only one predicting a disater if Trump is elected?

Not by a long shot. A survey of 39 economists by the Wall Street Journal found that not one economist favored Trump’s tariff plan. By one estimate, Trump’s tariff plan alone would cut gross domestic product by nearly 9 percent.

A letter from 23 Nobel prize winning economists explained: “His (Trump’s) policies, including high tariffs even on goods from our friends and allies and regressive tax cuts for corporations and individuals, will lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality. Among the most important determinants of economic success are the rule of law and economic and political certainty, and Trump threatens all of these.” (Vice president Kamala )Harris’s middle-class focused policies, they argued, “will do far more than Donald Trump’s to increase the economic strength and well-being of our nation and its people.”

The above is separate from the 82 Nobel prize winners in various fields that endorsed Harris last week. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/27/kamala-harris-economic-proposals/

Wrapping up…

If Donald Trump wins the election on November 5, and suspends the Constitution, he is putting himself in a dangerous position.

The policies he is proposing are likely to lead to an economic catastrophe. This is not a good thing. Also, for lack of time, I didn’t touch on the kangaroo courts he wants to introduce and his disastrous planned foreign policies.

Dictators soon run out of people to blame for the problems they create. So, back to my prediction at the start of this article. Within 18 months of their inauguration, Donald Trump and JD Vance will be dead. At the end, his supporters will correctly claim, “Everything Trump did, he promised in his campaign”. No argument here.