Republicans are thrilled: They have both the presidency and Congress.
Over the past three decades, one thing has proven true: This alignment never lasts long.
The great political analyst William Shakespeare had something to say about this: “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.”
He was having his character Macbeth talk about the impending murder of King Duncan, but he could also have been talking about more mundane policy matters. Whatever it is that Republicans want to do, they’d best do it now while they have majorities because those House and Senate majorities can be fleeting.
Before they do, though, they might want to pay heed to an even more ancient philosopher. Aesop of fable fame warned: Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.
Another great truism of politics is that almost every majority eventually overreaches and sparks a backlash. Sometimes administrations get into trouble with scandals, incompetence or just plain old bad luck; those problems are not unique to any one party. Donald Trump is already tempting fate by nominating so many people without much or any management experience to some key Cabinet positions. Other times, though, the policies a party ran on turn out to work differently than they promised. Democrats promised lots of infrastructure spending and delivered. However, if that fueled the inflation of the past four years, it also cost them the election. What policies that Republicans hold dear could similarly backfire?
For the past week or so I’ve been pointing out all the ways Democrats failed in the past election. (Some liberal readers were particularly unhappy with my suggestion that Democrats should listen to more country music.) Today, here are some ways that Republicans could fail going forward.
1. Tariffs could fail to reshore manufacturing and instead could drive prices up.
Throughout the campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly praised William McKinley for his support of tariffs that bore his name: “You know, our country in the 1890s was … probably the wealthiest it ever was because it was a system of tariffs. And we had a president — you know McKinley, right?”
Trump knows just enough history to get things wrong. The Tariff Act of 1890 — often called the McKinley Tariff after its legislative sponsor — came when McKinley was in Congress, not the White House. More importantly, those tariffs (up to 49%) drove up consumer prices so much that the economy tanked — and voters blamed Republicans. In the 1890 House elections, nearly one-half of the Republicans were defeated. In the 1892 presidential election, Republican incumbent Benjamin Harrison was turned out in favor of Democrat Grover Cleveland. When McKinley won the presidency in 1896, he pushed to raise tariffs but eventually switched and started pushing for trade deals.
If Trump can use the threat of tariffs to get better trade deals, that would be a win. Imposing actual tariffs, though, runs the risk of raising prices on consumers without reshoring jobs. Trump was able to institute some tariffs in his first term without fueling inflation but the levels he’s talking about now are much higher. We’re already seeing businesses react to the prospect of tariffs, but not necessarily in a way that Trump intends. AutoZone has warned of price increases: “If we get tariffs, we will pass those tariff costs back to the consumer,” its CEO told Wall Street analysts. “We’ll generally raise prices ahead of, we know what the tariffs will be, we generally raise prices ahead of that.”
The shoe company Steve Madden has talked about moving production out of China but into Brazil, Cambodia, Mexico and Vietnam. That might help shift the economic balance of power, but those shoe factory jobs aren’t coming back to Lynchburg.
There is also the danger of retaliatory tariffs. China is Virginia’s second-biggest destination for exports (behind Canada), according to federal trade statistics. Those Chinese exports are rising faster than any others: up 91.6% over the past year, according to the Observation of Economic Complexity. Any downturn in those exports would hit hardest with some of the most reliable Republican voters: farmers. China is the state’s top export market for agricultural products, according to the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, accounting for 28.4% of the state’s agricultural exports.
As the website name suggests, trade is complex. Trying to solve one problem could wind up creating another.
2. Deportations could reduce the labor force and drive up housing prices.
Trump has vowed to carry out “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” There hasn’t been much discussion of what the economic implications of that would be. Since we’re dealing with a population of immigrants who are here without the benefit of legal papers, there aren’t exactly a lot of hard statistics. However, some things are obvious: Many of these people are part of the workforce. A study eight years ago estimated that 70% of unauthorized immigrants were employed. That’s about 4.8% of the U.S. workforce, according to the Pew Research Center. The Migration Policy Center said that 31% of unauthorized immigrants work in construction trades.
Everybody agrees that we have a housing shortage and the solution is to build more houses. How is that going to work if we reduce the construction workforce?
In Virginia, we don’t know how unauthorized immigrants are distributed, but we know how immigrants, in general, are distributed: They are primarily concentrated in Northern Virginia. Southwest Virginia will not feel the impact of deportations as much as Northern Virginia, but everything in the economy is eventually connected.
3. Health care changes could leave people without health insurance.
Many Republicans would love to repeal the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. The big question: Will that drive up the number of people without health insurance? This is an example of how the new Republican coalition — more blue-collar than white-collar — is going to prove challenging for some traditional conservative philosophies.
In Loudoun County, which voted 56% for Kamala Harris, only 4.7% don’t have health insurance. In Lee County, which voted 85% for Donald Trump, 10.8% don’t. That’s why in Virginia it was Southwest Virginia Republicans who broke ranks and wound up voting for Medicaid expansion. They saw that as the only way to keep their hospitals open (hospitals count on those Medicaid reimbursements). Rural hospitals are already the ones that are most stressed economically. Any health care changes that endanger rural hospitals, or drive up the number of people without health insurance, are likely to hit harder in places represented by Republicans. The ACA may not be perfect, but can it be changed without putting Republican constituents at risk? What might be a perfect solution in some conservative think tank may not square well with the daily realities of where many conservative voters actually live.
4. Targeting ‘woke’ colleges could wind up targeting a lot of rural employers.
In a video last year, Trump laid out his plans to target colleges that persist in promoting diversity, equity and inclusion policies: “Schools that persist in explicit unlawful discrimination under the guise of equity will not only have their endowments taxed, but through budget reconciliation, I will advance a measure to have them fined up to the entire amount of their endowment.”
He also wants to remake their curriculum. Here’s how: “Fire the radical left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics. … We will then accept applications for new accreditors who will impose real standards on colleges once again.”
Campaigning against “woke” academics is good politics for many Republicans, and goodness knows, some schools have offered up plenty of fodder. It’s one thing, though, to go after the Harvards and Berkleys. It’s another to go after your state schools or your local private liberal arts college.
Virginia has 15 four-year state schools. Of those, seven are in congressional districts represented by Republicans. It has 22 four-year private schools. Of those, 18 are in congressional districts represented by Republicans (a function of many of them being in small towns in the western part of the state). How many of these schools are really “dominated by Marxists and lunatics”? We do know, though, that they are all employers, and often a major employer, in a rural area.
5. Reducing the federal workforce could tank Virginia’s economy.
Trump’s new government efficiency czar, Elon Musk, says it ought to be possible to cut “at least $2 trillion” in federal spending. His co-czar, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, says he wants to get rid of 75% of the federal workforce. (Question: Is it efficient to have two people in charge?) Whatever the actual number, here’s the one that matters: Virginia has more federal workers than any other state. Reducing the federal workforce might be good policy nationally but is not good economics for Virginia.
This may not be a problem for any Republican members of Virginia’s congressional delegation: We have two Democratic senators, and Northern Virginia is represented entirely by Democratic House members. U.S. Reps. Jen Kiggans, R-Virginia Beach, has a big military presence in her Hampton Roads district, but there’s not a particularly big federal presence in other Republican districts in Virginia. Our Republican governor says he’s not concerned: “The great thing about the commonwealth of Virginia is we have nearly 300,000 jobs that are unfilled,” he said last week. “Those private sector jobs provide opportunities for any federal workers who lose their government jobs.”
That assumes, of course, that all those job openings line up with the qualifications of federal workers who might get deep-sixed. What might be true in the aggregate may not be true in the specifics. Northern Virginia is the state’s economic engine — the biggest source of state revenue is the income tax and the wealthiest localities in Virginia are all in Northern Virginia. It’s that revenue that allows the state to pay most of the school costs in rural Virginia. If anything depresses the Northern Virginia economy, that’s eventually felt in schools in Southwest Virginia.
Any moves to reduce the federal workforce might cheer Republicans nationwide but could have a less than salutary effect for Republicans in next year’s governor’s race — and any House of Delegates races in districts that have a lot of federal workers.
I don’t mean to sound negative about the incoming administration, but history shows every party in power eventually does something that goes wrong. These are just five ways Republicans could.
Virginia politics, up close
I write a weekly political newsletter, West of the Capital, that goes out every Friday afternoon. The photo above is one of the items in last week’s edition. I also reviewed some of the speculation about what happens next in Virginia politics now that Donald Trump has been elected.
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