Core to MAGA plans, if they win in November 2024, is to upend US free market capitalism and replace it with crony capitalism, which is regulated and supported by political loyalists with their allegiance not to the rule of law but to Trump and his think tank planners at the Heritage Foundation. Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation think tank plan already poised to be executed upon Trump's election, proposes to fire and replace thousands of civil servants with political loyalists. The result will be a blow to consumer safety, the environment, finances, and prices, as Trump proposes charging a 10% import fee, which will be passed on to consumers. Wait, there is more.
Trump has a history of sabotaging consumer and environmental protections: https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2018/05/trump-economic-unpopulist.html
Update 5 17 2024: One of the most significant upgrades to consumer protections is contained in the watchdog over consumer finance, was upheld by the Supreme Court but still faces defanging by MAGA https://www.reuters.com/legal/despite-consumer-watchdogs-us-supreme-court-win-agency-powers-still-chopping-2024-05-17
Update: 5 12 2024 Crony capitalism is also a characteristic of modern dictatorships, from Hungary to Russia. Perhaps a better word is the Russian one for crony capitalists: Oligarchs.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-again-attacks-new-york-prosecutor-floats-economic-plans-new-jersey-rally-2024-05-12/
Update: 4 9 2024: The company Trump keeps and to whom he owes, and his record of a fraudster means heads up for consumers. He is not your friend. The businessman Don Hankey, who provided the money for Donald Trump's $145 million bond, has a reputation as what we used to call in a white collar prosecutors unit a high-risk loan shark, a lender of last resort, and a repo man in car loans who got rich providing loans to high-risk customers and charging fees skating usury. His practices are not consumer-friendly, to put it mildly, and has had run-ins with regulators. Trump owes him a big one since, given Trump's practice of going bankrupt and court processes around fraudulent business practices that bring into question Trump's financial worth, make him a high-risk borrower. Trump claimed he could not find anyone to give him the bond he needed as he appealed a $400 plus judgment for financial fraud. Hanky and Trump deserve one another. https://projects.apnews.com/features/2023/trump-investigations-civil-criminal-tracker/index.htmlm https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-don-hankey-billionaire-175-million-bond-who-is-he/ He also defanged the new financial consumer protection bureau. https://www.npr.org/2018/02/12/584980698/trump-administration-to-defang-consumer-protection-watchdog
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/billionaire-don-hankey-trump-175-million-bond-subprime-car-loans-rcna146232
Original posts continue:
Crony capitalism is a feature of every autocracy from Hungary to Russia. Crony capitalism is institutionalized corruption. In fact, that is how Viktor Orban accumulated is political power with promises and favoritism to loyalists. . It is the same model that CPAC and Trump salivate after and advocate to install if elected to power. Instead of "keeping us safe at any speed," regulatory law will decide who and which businesses have proved their loyalty, either in campaign contributions or in loyalty pledges, and how towed to the party line. The standard in crony capitalism is no longer market competition based upon the survival of those with best practices. and price/value fair standards within regulatory constraints even their competitors are bound to obey. There is no level playing field where all must abide by the same rules. Instead, it is based on the favoritism given to businesses that have paid for in political contributions or sworn to loyalty to their regulators.
Those who have faith that the medication they take they can afford and they are warned of side effects and labels and advertising cannot lie will be destroyed if the decisions favor manufacturers and producers who are looking after their self-interest and profit instead of having to toe the line of regulations designed to protect consumers from being ripped off or endangered. That anti-trust action to protect consumers from price gouging and price fixing. Truth in labeling and disclosure requirements will be ruled by those who have shown loyalty to MAGA and Trump. That affordable access to health care and prescription drugs by MAGA and Trump, already advocating the end of Obamacare and cutting Medicare and Medicaid, will now be decided by MAGA loyalists who have already promised to cut, subvert, or end them.
One of the dumbest and most harmful proposals by Donald Trump is to slap a 100% tariff on every import care. This means that to cover the import costs and keep their profit margins, manufacturers will simply increase the cost of the imports to customers or go out of business.. that will not only kill off the import market, but it will also give cover for domestic car manufactures to raise their prices too, and still be lower than the import competition.
Even more profound, foreign and domestic investors who counted on the stability of the rule of law provided them will no longer see the US as a stable place to put their money and invest in improvements or that the free market will even be the level playing field in which they can compete. Instead, their advantages will go to the loyalists, not those whose price, manufacturing efficiency, and consumer appeal have the advantage in a free market system.
Felicia Muftic is the author of the Colorado Consumer Handbook and has a career spent in prosecution, regulatory agency oversight, and consumer advocacy of consumer protection and support of ethical business practices and practitioners. She is also the president and principal partner of a small business subject to FDA and FTC rules and regulations. She appreciates the level playing field in a competitive business environment.
https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2023/08/how-heritage-foundation-plans-to-turn.html
https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2024/03/grocery-price-inflation-biden-is-taking.html
https://fortune.com/2024/03/16/trump-100-tariff-for-cars-made-in-mexico-by-chinese-firms/
https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2024/01/victims-of-trump-v-2-would-be-us.html
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