Transcript: Trump Tirades on Econ Go Awry as GOP Panics: “Disaster!”

Sargent: You wrote in your piece that Trump is uniquely vulnerable here for other reasons as well. First, he campaigned as a populist. And second, his right-wing populist policies are what are playing the big role. in making the crisis worse for working people. Can you explain that argument?

Shapiro: Sure. There are really two dimensions of it. One is the government addresses affordability all the time by subsidizing certain goods. So we subsidize health care, not only through the kind of tax treatment, but through ACA subsidies and Medicaid. Well, he’s cutting the ACA subsidies and he’s cutting Medicaid. So that means as a direct policy goal, he is making those health care less affordable for probably about 100 million people. We subsidize food and we subsidize it through the SNAP program for 42 million people.

We also have, in a way, subsidized it through very, very low tariffs on food imported from abroad. Well, the tariffs reversed that. So we are, as a policy matter, making food less affordable, just like we’re making healthcare less affordable. And the third area is energy, where again, he is subsidies for wind and solar and other sustainable energies, which those subsidies brought down people’s electricity bills or held them down. Well, he’s ended those. That’s one of the reasons everybody’s electricity bills have gone up. So he has taken positive, deliberate steps to make healthcare, food, and electricity less affordable, not more affordable.