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Conservative Chronicle
DONALD TRUMP: March 31, 2016
Trump’s sinking fortunes reflected in dropping polls
I
t isn’t every day I get a note pening in the U.S. auto industry. He from one of Donald Trump’s is making up a situation that does not former supporters, saying Trump exist. Worse, Trump uses decades-old trade doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But earlier this week, Stephanie rhetoric that may have been legitimate in Cegielski, who was a consultant to a the ‘60s, ‘70s or ‘80s, but not in today’s former “Make America Great Again” global economy. In one of the first Represidential debates super PAC (that has since shut down), publican this year, Trump said read my column that Japanese ships about how the were lined up on former TV reality the West Coast, show host is makloaded with cars ing stuff up about (c) 2016, United Media Services to sell to AmeriAmerica’s trade cans. That is no record. The day before, she had posted an open letter longer true. While he’s telling voters that he will online, denouncing the candidate she once supported, and emailed me some bring “jobs back to America,” the fact is that Japan is the one creating millions of of those same sentiments. “The man does not know policy, jobs in our country. Toyota, Honda and nor does he have the humility to ad- other automakers have manufacturing mit what he does not know,” Cegielski plants across our country, where Ameriwrote, saying she no longer supports cans are turning out cars, automotive parts and engines by the millions. Trump. Most of these plants are set up in NOT ONLY does he not know much right-to-work states in the South where about trade policies, but he’s given to they don’t have to deal with unions, inventing his own “facts” about them. “and that in turn has led to supplier My column was about remarks parks being established nearby,” says Trump made last month, in which he ace Washington Post fact checker Glenn said, “They (Japan) have cars coming Kessler. “Trump’s promise that he was going in (to the U.S.) by the millions, and we to bring car companies back to Michisell practically nothing. “We will keep the car industry in gan ignores the fact that Michigan has Michigan, and we’re going to bring car been losing the auto industry to other companies back to Michigan,” he told states, not countries, because of its voters on a campaign swing through union traditions,” Kessler writes. “Michigan would have to pull up its the Rust Belt. But this is a deep distortion, if not socks in a big way,” says Gary Hufbaudownright false, about what is hap- er, senior fellow at the Peterson Insti-
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tute for International Economics. “You might be able to bring some auto production back to the United States, but not Michigan.” That’s another thing Trump doesn’t mention, because he either doesn’t know it, or leaves it out of his speeches to con the voters into believing his phony political pitch. Yes, manufacturing jobs have declined in the U.S., but we’re producing more because of increased productivity. “In real terms, U.S. factories produced more output (looking at straight output or value added) last year than ever before in history,” says Dan Ikenson, director of trade policy studies at the free-market Cato Institute. “Year after year (with the exception of recessions), the sector breaks new records with respect to output, revenues, exports, imports, return on investment.” AT THE SAME time, “Trump’s complaints about currency manipulation are woefully out of date,” Kessler says, quoting economist Fred Bergsten, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute, who says Trump is “way out of whack.”
China hasn’t been manipulating its currency for about two years. Indeed, it’s been selling its dollars and reducing its reserves in the face of its economic slowdown. Kessler, who gives out Pinocchios to public figures who make false and dubious claims, gave Trump four, his worst score for dishonesty. Yet all of Trump’s false or outdated statements about trade and imports have remained a staple in his campaign rhetoric, duping voters into believing that he knows what he’s talking about. But people are beginning to catch on to Trump’s flimflam candidacy, and an increasing number of voters are turning away from him in droves. In fact, recent polling shows that both Trump and his remaining chief rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, fell to new lows in their favorable ratings in March. “The primary and caucus season is taking its toll on the images of three of the major presidential candidates,” writes Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the well-respected Gallup Poll. “Republicans Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, in particular, have suffered significant drops in their images over the past two months,” Newport said Wednesday. “Trump has always had the worst image” of any of the five active presidential candidates, “and his image has slipped further among Americans since January.” Trump’s current minus-35 net favorable rating — 30 percent favorable and 65 percent unfavorable — “is the worst for him in any month since tracking began,” Newport says. “Cruz, like Trump, has seen his image deteriorate in recent months,” too. “His net favorable score of minus-16 (based on 32 percent favorable and 48 percent unfavorable) is now the second lowest of the five candidates.” Hillary Clinton’s numbers are better, but still weak, 42 percent favorable versus 53 percent unfavorable. The bottom line: Americans now view Trump and Cruz in “a worse light than in any month since Gallup began last July.” AND JUDGING from Trump’s incendiary remarks this week that “there has to be some form of punishment” for women who got an abortion if it was made illegal, the GOP’s polls are only going to get worse.