And I will add too that as a “reality star”–and to be clear he has had a talent for being in the news since the 1980’s, but didn’t have his own show–his job was to find and reward the most competent teams who were given specific tasks with measurable outcomes. His job, was to identify talent, and get rid of dead weight.
Is that not what we need?
He may disappoint me. No one can say they truly know what he will do, not least because I don’t think HE knows exactly what he will do. But he will make decisions, quite likely large ones, and very likely ones which will benefit our country for a generation. Making our national pension and socialized medicine systems–Social Security and Medicare/medicaid–sane is certainly possible. Moving past Obamacare is certainly possible. Stopping illegal immigration is likely. At a rock bottom minimum, he will tell ICE to do their jobs, when Obama is telling them now, and Hillary will tell them then, not to do anything but look the other way, and release whoever stumbles over their feet.
And with regard to trade, at issue is not that we need to enact huge trade tariff’s. The economics are clear that free trade on balance helps everyone. At issue is that China and most of Asia put tariffs and restrictions on our products, which makes it harder to sell there. We don’t want to tariff their stuff so much as stop them from preventing our entry into those markets. That is my understanding.
But negotiating will require some gamesmanship. At this point, China needs us more than we need her. There is no reason to push things all the way to the brink, but they have been screwing us for a very long time, and they know it.