President Trump’s State of the Union address this week oscillated between hyperbole and manipulation. He started off saying that the US is stronger than ever, because it is going through an “economic miracle”. He also said that the country’s economy is experiencing an unprecedented expansion, whose benefits begin to favor both the working class and traditional US industrial sectors—an exaggerated claim without foundation.
Stating the facts
This is not the most important expansion period in the history of the US. Reagan and Clinton, to name recent ones, governed during more robust growth periods. Likewise, it is false that the US entered a growth under his administration, after starting from a crisis. The truth is that the US economy has been experiencing a sustained growth for eight years, after Obama helmed the ship to overcome the immense 2008 crisis. However, it is true that growth and consumption accelerated since Trump’s government approved the tax cut, with a Republican majority, almost two years ago. Nevertheless, that stimulus begins to exhaust itself, and will significantly increase the fiscal deficit, which Trump has taken from 2.8% of GDP (where Obama left it) to 4.4%. With this fiscal deficit, and without a different direction for a budget plan, it will be very difficult to address, for example, a plan to invest in infrastructure and other policies, which Trump himself outlined in his attempt to present Congress with ideas likely to find bipartisan support.
But assuming that there is a sustained growth period with significant increases in productivity and competitiveness in the business sectors, what does Trump propose to ensure that the benefits of this economic expansion reach the middle sectors and the working class?
The Trump administration and the Republicans continue to refuse increasing the federal minimum wage. They still do not propose alternatives or improvements to the health reform that Obama approved, which extended coverage to millions of citizens. And, moreover, they still do not take the step towards supporting immigration reform with a path to citizenship. This reform would accelerate economic growth, as proved by all credible studies, while offering a humanitarian solution to nearly 12 million undocumented immigrants, who are already part of the social fabric of the USA, and constitute a positive contribution to society with their work and commitment to the values of American society.
On the contrary, during his address on Tuesday night, Trump demonized immigration again to support his false assumption of a national emergency that requires building the wall. Trump treated this issue, before Congress, with an unacceptable manipulation. His maneuver consisted in elevating the visibility of two regrettable and indefensible cases of murders, perpetrated by undocumented immigrants, with the evident objective of relating Latino immigration with criminality—an argument that cannot be found in any statistics of the Department of Justice. This xenophobic and racist rhetoric downplays other terrible crime trends against people in the US, such as massacres perpetrated by fanatics with assault weapons or repeating riffles, which are already an endemic problem in the United States’ society.
Venezuela
We cannot ignore that Trump included in his State of the Union a concrete reference of the crisis in Venezuela, with an encouraging and decisive support for the interim presidency of Juan Guaidó. The history of the conflict that our Venezuela is experiencing, and the well-documented hardening of the US government against the Maduro and his regime’s excesses, began with the bipartisan initiative Menéndez-Rubio Law. President Obama dictated the first list of sanctions to officials of the Chavez regime and, based on that law, renewed the authority of the Executive to continue issuing sanctions, before handing over the command to Trump. Additionally, it is worth remembering that the Justice Department corruption investigations began under the Obama administration, and have now crystallized in the actions formulated by the prosecutors of Houston and Miami.
Things have changed since then. During the Obama administration, there was never an event like the one Venezuela is going through now. Maduro has no origin legitimacy in front of the Venezuelan National Assembly controlled by the democratically elected opposition. Furthermore, during the Obama administration, there was not an inter-American and world panorama of rejection and questioning of Maduro’s regime, as it exists today.
In summary, the Democratic Party’s support for regaining democracy in Venezuela has been constant, firm and tenacious. Today, in the heart of the Congress, Senators Durbin and Menéndez express their voices; in the House, the spokesperson, Nancy Pelosi, and the president of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Eliot Engel, do the same. It is an entirely bipartisan effort. The position of the Democratic Party is clear: Venezuela must return to democracy through credible presidential elections as soon as possible.
However, during the speech, Trump manipulates, with his eye set on Southeast Florida (Miami), when he affirms that this fight is against socialism, which failed in Venezuela and some are promoting in the US. To clarify, Nicolás Maduro embodies a kleptocratic militarism and oppressive regime in human rights matters. The social policies of Chavismo were reduced a long time ago to a crude clientelism, which conditions all kinds of government assistance to the loyalty of the most vulnerable sectors. Interventionism and expropriations, in the heat of a project to accumulate political power, destroyed the private sector and corruption led to a collapse of the state oil industry. Nobody in the US political spectrum proposes to follow the path that led Venezuela to the painful prostration in which it finds itself. In Venezuela, there is a struggle against a military and oppressive regime that is unrelated to those who promote social democratic approaches, whose references are very far from Venezuela, Cuba or Nicaragua; and rather they are found in the countries of northern Europe or in the German social market economy.
A formal response
After the Trump’s address, the Democrat leader Stacey Abrams, of Georgia, gave the customary response. Back in November, Abrams ran for governor of her state. Her contender snatched Abrams’s electoral victory by abusing his double condition of candidate and secretary of state—the same office that administrates the electoral process. In Georgia, the right to vote of thousands of citizens belonging to minorities (African-Americans, Latinos and vulnerable sectors) was suppressed, with unconstitutional legal subterfuges, which would have changed the result if they had been counted. In her response, Abrams outlined a different and refreshing agenda, with budgetary and legislative proposals, which calls for a consensus on priority issues to achieve economic growth accompanied by social justice. And, very especially, an inclusive political agenda of the diversity of the social fabric of the USA. Then, the Spanish response corresponded to the Democrat Attorney General of California, Xavier Becerra, who endorsed the Stacey Abrams, emphasizing the need to guarantee the right to health, as well as respect for the immigrant community.
Finally, the most serious aspect of Trump’s speech was his insistence on disqualifying the investigations carried out by Mueller’s office, other prosecutors’ offices and the House of Representatives, now under Democratic control. His puerile argument was that investigating him goes against the economic achievements of his government.
Far from promoting agreements that unlock the impasse between the Congress and the White House, Trump’s speech anticipates the spirit of his campaign for presidential re-election. And it demonstrates his limited attachment to institutional controls over the power of the Presidency. Nothing, by the way, that we did not know. It was Trump being Trump.
Para español lea Al Navío “Trump endurece la línea contra Maduro que comenzó con Obama”