alt Hacker NewsTrump is the populist candidate elected to put the US back on competitive economic footing.
His economic policy has way more overlap with Bernie's than people tend to understand. Both believe immigration lowers wages, and both believe tariffs are imperative (you have to dig back to pre-2017 talk from Bernie, he changed his website/talking points after Trump won).
Edit: People struggle so hard with politics because everyone is totally blinded by there side. Here are populist things Trump has done/trying to do
- remove taxes on tips
- implement tariffs on foreign goods
- implement strict immigration policy (note sanders wanted a pathway to citizenship, he did not want an open border, and he never addressed how he would handle millions showing up at the border)
- block corporate landlords from single family home ownership
- create a government funded college level education program to get free bachelor degrees.
- take government ownership stake in large American companies (us steel, intel)
- cap interest rates on credit cards
- lower central bank interest rates
- de-criminalizing drugs, reschedule marijuana
- pro crypto
- pro prediction markets
Guys, you can hate Trump, you can accurately access he isn't intelligent or competent, criticize his brutish approach, but if you cannot recognize he is a populist, you are objectively lost-in-the-sauce.
Replies
I sorta doubt Bernie would've been causing the insane tariff chaos that Trump is constantly doing. How it's done matters immensely.
Support for anything Trump in this context is completely detached from reality. Unhinged.
And yet the economy outside the great AI bubble is continuing to slow down. The rest of the world doesn't want our stuff. We make uncompetitive products.
My own megacorp is continuing to build mass manufacturing capacity in Europe, specifically because tariffs are causing hassles for US import and export, and our EU buyers are demanding EU made after the bull decided to destroy all diplomatic relations built the last few decades.
You're finding somethere where nothing exists on the basis of semantics. Donald Trump is not a populist and he stated economic policy is simply "stated". Society just has become so trusting that someone can go about bald-faced lying about their beliefs and actions, while doing the opposite, without consequence.
Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are on polar opposite ends of ideologies.
Bernie Sanders has a lifetime record of integrity, working to fairly distribute wealth, and good and transparent governance.
Donald Trump has a lifetime record of bankruptcies, fraud convictions, lying about his policies for the working while governing for the richest people, using government to enrich himself, and using government to hide his misdeeds and shield himself and his business partners from accountability. Donald Trump says he is many things he is not, and simply believing the words that come out of his mouth is being gullible.
I am not even a Bernie Sanders supporter.
Whether you believe in immigration reform or that we need tariffs to protect domestic industries or not, Trump executed both in the absolute worst way possible. And destroying USAID, threatening to take Greenland by force, constantly threatening to pull out of NATO, abducting the leader of another country, and invading Iran with almost no preparation or planning were not things Bernie would have done.
Just specific to tariffs, if you are a US company that wants to setup domestic manufacturing you have no idea what the situation will be next week much less several years from now. The chaos isn’t good for anyone but Trump. The rule of law is as much about stability as it is freedom.