Schatz: Donald Trump’s Economy Is Costing You More Money

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawai'i) spoke on the Senate floor today about how Donald Trump's economic policies are raising prices on everything, killing jobs, and causing shortages.

"Trump is raising the price of everything. Unless you are a billionaire getting enormous tax cuts and generous corporate giveaways, this economy sucks," said Senator Schatz. "Donald Trump has made shortages the cornerstone of his economic agenda, and it is working. We are becoming smaller and weaker in more ways than one under Trump. But in this way, we are quite literally following Donald Trump's plan, and there is no escaping the consequences."

A transcript of Senator Schatz's remarks is below. Video is available here.

The numbers do not lie. The job market is practically frozen. Unemployment is at its highest level in four years. Inflation is rising. Homebuilding is stagnant. The manufacturing sector is shrinking. And to top it all off, Trump is raising the price of everything. Vegetables are up 40 percent, coffee 15 percent. Everything from toothpaste to detergent to shoes to video game consoles cost more. And more price hikes are on the way this fall and holiday season, as businesses exhaust their inventories and give up on eating billions of dollars of added cost. This is America's "golden age" under Donald Trump. If it wasn't clear before, it is abundantly clear now. Unless you are a billionaire getting enormous tax cuts and generous corporate giveaways, this economy sucks.

Costs are piling up. Saving money is nearly impossible and just getting by, let alone buying a home or raising a family is a lot harder. And the worst part of it is there was actually no reason for any of this. There's no pandemic. We're not in the middle of a war. There's no ongoing emergency. This is a crisis of the president's own making, and we're all paying the price.

Donald Trump has made shortages the cornerstone of his economic agenda, and it is working. We now have shortages of nearly everything: food, electricity, health care workers and with less supply to go around, everything costs more. It does not take a genius to work that out. And in fact, people have worked it out. Trump's approval rating on inflation and the cost of living is 24 points underwater.

His approval rating on the economy overall is at -13. More than half of Americans think the economy is getting worse. And less than a quarter of Americans think it's improving. We are on a speed run to become Venezuela and people can see it. This is a deliberate economic program. Like there's the sense that he just wakes up in the morning and does whatever he feels like doing. And to some extent, he is improvising. But make no mistake, he has a coherent economic theory, which is we should shrink the supply of everything. He thinks it strengthens a dollar. He thinks it helps with manufacturing. And I think he thinks that the less there is of stuff, the more people have to go and petition the king for mercy.

This is a deliberate economic program predicated on shortages across American society. And in turn, the United States is set to shrink for the first time in our history. Think about that. The United States, the greatest nation that the world has ever known, the indispensable nation, the leader of the free world, the leader of the world is shrinking. We are becoming smaller and weaker in more ways than one under Trump. But in this way, we are quite literally following Donald Trump's plan, and there is no escaping the consequences.

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