Deportations and border closures were political losers for President Trump and the Republicans. That’s because voters vote their pocketbooks.
More than a few who read this opinion piece’s opening will disagree with its assessment, as will pundits seemingly. Right or left, they seem to monolithically believe that President Biden’s failure to secure the border hurt the Democrats. The speculation here is that the consensus is all wrong.
Let’s start with a basic question: if work in the U.S. were legal without regard to citizenship, does anyone seriously think would-be workers would mass at the southern border? Hopefully the question answers itself. If not, the Texas cities and towns that abut Mexico’s border aren’t where the economic opportunity is. Neither is El Paso. San Diego is a different story, but broadly the economic opportunity is well north of the U.S.’s southern entry points.
Which will hopefully cause readers to rethink the politics of an empty border. Was unhappiness with the huge crowds of old indicative of broad disdain for immigration, or was it reasonable horror at the seeming chaos? The bet here is that it was the latter. Americans don’t hate immigration, but they do hate central planning. What voters formerly saw at the border is what happens when governments try to control what is a market phenomenon. It’s a suggestion that perhaps Joe Biden’s problem wasn’t the inflow of willing workers into the United States, it was how those willing workers were coming into the United States. There’s a difference.
President Trump has once again won plaudits from left and right, including some of his most prominent critics, for closing the border. Their willingness to give Trump credit here won’t age well, and it won’t because people are an economic input. Particularly people willing to risk so much to get to the United States. Put another way, those massing at the border weren’t just people, they were ambitious people.
How we know this can be found in the truth about where ICE agents go in search of central Americans to deport: it’s places of work. Seemingly always.
At which point we can look past the praise directed at Trump while contemplating the economic implications of so many central Americans no longer bringing their ambitions to the United States, being deported from the United States, or substantially hiding themselves within the United States while waiting out the ICE’s predators. Immigration is an effect of growth, and logically a driver of same.
Sorry, but it’s that simple. While AI and other technologies will consistently increase the productivity of Americans now and in the future, they will in no way vitiate the truth that people, and in particular ambitious people, are always economically additive.
It’s worth thinking about as extraordinarily wise thinkers like Gerard Baker claim the big voter issues are the border, affordability, and national security. Ok, but Trump “closed” the border, plus there’s talk of a Nobel Prize for his successes with Israel vis-à-vis Hamas. Why didn’t this reflect on 11/4? That it didn’t is perhaps a signal that the experts are incorrect about what the electorate truly wants. Put another way, if politicians aren’t contemplating growth then their minds are wandering.
Think affordability, Baker’s third issue. It’s an effect of growth. When more people are working together, particularly in the United States, costs decline. While economists believe growth drives prices upward, the reality of productivity reveals exactly the opposite.
Which is a comment that voters love growth while hating central planning. The optics of Biden’s central plans irritated voters, but the bitter reduced affordability fruits of Trump’s central planning irritates voters even more.
Originally posted to Real Clear Markets.
