Donald Trump has built his candidacy for president around his decades of experience in real estate and other business ventures. His son, Eric Trump — who serves as executive vice president of the Trump Organization — joined Yahoo Finance last week to talk about some of his father’s specific economic proposals.
One of Donald Trump’s most discussed proposals would involve instituting a 35% tariff against Mexico and a 45% tariff against Chinese goods. A model of Trump’s proposals, prepared by Moody’s Analytics, found the US would fall into recession if Trump managed to impose these tariffs and unravel the North American Free Trade Agreement.
In response to the potential detrimental economic consequences of these proposals, Eric Trump told Yahoo Finance the tariffs would be measures of last resort.
“I don’t think it’s something he necessarily wants to do,” he told Yahoo Finance. “I think it’s a tool that he wants to save, though, if he has to do it.”
The younger Trump cited examples of jobs and capital leaving the US.
“A couple of days ago I was in a plant and they made light bulbs,” he said. “The last employee of the plant was sent down by his company down to Mexico … to train the Mexican workforce to make the lightbulbs that he used to be making in New Hampshire. So he’s out of a job, and he just trained people from a different country to effectively take his job. You hear those stories and it’s so, so sad.”
When asked how Donald Trump would be able to incentivize companies to hire workers in the US, given the recession risk of steep tariffs, he said that US is already falling into a recession.
“Well, we’re falling into a recession anyway, because, what’s the point of cheap product if people can’t afford to buy it because you don’t have jobs, right?” he said. “I mean, at the end of the day, what’s the point of cheap product if you can’t buy it because people are unemployed and they’re living off of the government, and our national deficit is skyrocketing?”
The latest jobs report for June showed the unemployment rate at 4.9%, halved since hitting 10% in 2009 during the recession. Economists project GDP to grow around 2% in 2016.
Despite this projected economic growth, Eric Trump said he believes that both international currency manipulation and domestic regulation are hindering businesses.
“You see these countries that are manipulating their currencies every single day, making it impossible,” he said. “You also see our own regulation, and that’s probably the biggest worry. I mean, it takes the average business 16 months — small business, start-up business, 16 months to become formed and actually start. We’re losing more businesses than we’re creating in this country. I mean, we have an inverse slope.”