What's up with Donald Trump

It's rare that your blogger writes about politics and I assure you when I do I will try to be very fair in my assessment to all sides of the story. That being said, I've noticed that Donald Trump has been getting a lot of attention in the media, and decided that it may be interesting to analyze his economic policies, specifically immigration and the relationship with mexico.

First one that's been the most talked about is his stance on immigration. He has said that he would stop the flow illegal immigrants, make mexico build a wall and pay for it themselves, put sanctions on mexico, and fine mexico 100,000$ for each immigrant that they "knowingly" send over. 

Whether the government should limit the number of immigrants coming into the country will always be hotly debated. One side of the argument is that if we allow too many low skilled workers, it will create a surplus of their cheap labor and drive down wages for unskilled workers and blow up income inequality.Its the most popular argument for trade unions and protectionists. The other side is that the argument claims the first argument falls into what economists the "lump of labor" fallacy. The idea being that wages can only fall if  ceteris paribus holds which it never does.They claim that immigration may even cause wages to rise with the increase in wealth of that area. 

The rest of his arguments are humorous at best I'm afraid. If Mr. Trump were to storm into the Mexican parliament and demand that they pass a bill to build a wall across the entire border, and pay a fine of around 1 Trillion dollars to the U.S, it wouldn't go very well. 

First of all, our allies in other countries would start to think of America as a bully and trying to subvert another independent countries democracy. Think of how some countries and academic institutions are speaking about Germany's actions toward  Greece only the U.S. doesn't have a reasonable claim to Mexicos debt. 

Second his demands that they pay the fine and build the fence would throw the country into a sovereign debt crisis and would create an incentive for the government to just inflate away the debt, hurting savings in the process.

Third, levying sanctions on a trade partner would be a violation of NAFTA and the WTO could penalize the U.S. Not to mention it would hurt its credibility in the current TPP talks and any other future trade pacts as well. 
An economic future for america with a trump president would look very dismal, there might be some who would favor it, (Labor Unions in manufacturing would love a 25% tariff on Chinese goods), and conservatives on the far right would admire anyone who attacks immigration on Mr. Trumps level.
The economist did a great piece on Mr. Trump here that might explain why a real estate mogul would enter into politics in the first place.