Trump’s Economic Plan Could Screw Ohio

During President-Elect Donald Trump’ campaign, he boasted high tax cuts and and a burgeoning new economy that would revive the Midwest’s manufacturing losses. Yet, to one Ohio State University Economics Professor, Trump’s prediction could be baseless and in fact, detrimental to Ohio’s economy.

OSU Economics Professor Mark Partridge told WOSU that while unemployment in Ohio has been slowing at 4.9 percent (just about the 4.6 national average), that gap is still widening and is caused by a number of factors.

Manufacturing has significantly slowed if not noticeably declined in the last six months, international trade has slowed down, and the dollar has been appreciating — meaning it’s cheap for us to buy international imports, but expensive for other countries to buy from us.

Ideally Trump’s economic plan and tax cuts would be a boon for Ohio, but Partridge fears that with large budget deficits, interests rates could go up making the dollar appreciate further, causing more economic pressure on manufacturing and farming.

And to add to the downward spiraling economic prophecy, Partridge says Trump can’t just bring back manufacturing jobs — it’s simply not that easy. Manufacturing jobs in the U.S. are competing with manufacturing jobs around the world, and the world is saying more robots and automation, less real human workers.

Even if Trump puts high tariffs on our trade partners like China, our roots and economic/business connections there are so deep that tariffs would be a double-edge sword to our economic gut — it could hurt us too.

Finally, Partridge ended his gloomy interview with WOSU saying that Gov. John Kasich predicts there to be a recession in 2017 — but he could just be putting up a front to lower everyone’s expectations on state funding.

How’s that for the start of the New Year. What do you think about Trump’s economy in Ohio? Let us know in the comments below!

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