Trump-The Biggest Loser

Jonathan Taplin
5 min readDec 17, 2019

Here is the basic problem for any Democrat trying to unseat Donald Trump in 2020. According to the latest Quinnipiac Poll, “73 percent, describe the economy as either excellent or good, while only a quarter, 25 percent, say not so good or poor. Among those who say the economy is either excellent or good, 56 percent approve of the job President Trump is doing, while 40 percent disapprove.”

But that leaves the question of how do the Democrats beat him next November. I’m not positive that the corruption angle the Warren (and to some extent Sanders)campaign is playing, will change any minds. I believe the average person believes that politics is inherently a corrupt game and that both parties play it.

The better position is to show that Trump is incompetent. For instance, here is the simple math on Trump’s “great China trade deal”. China agreed to buy $50 Billion of agriculture products next year, which was an increase of $29 Billion from pre-tariff trade. Trump’s tariffs cost U.S. farmers $11 Billion. Then taxpayers put up $28 Billion in emergency agriculture welfare payouts. In the end we lost/spent $39Billion to gain $29Billion. The is the art of the bad deal. As the New York Times reported, the Chinese know they won.

People close to China’s economic policymaking process say that as the trade talks progressed this past week, the mood among Chinese…

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Jonathan Taplin
Jonathan Taplin

Written by Jonathan Taplin

Director Emeritus, USC Annenberg Innovation Lab. Producer/Author, “Mean Streets”, “Move Fast & Break Things”. New book, “The Magic Years”, out 3/21.

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