CANNAINVESTOR Magazine March / April 2017 | Page 91

If Trump Wants To Add Jobs, He Should Look At America’s Cannabis Industry

By Jeffrey Friedland

“I’ll be the greatest president for jobs that God ever created”, Donald Trump decreed during a campaign event at the Polish American Congress in Chicago. “Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families” trumpeted our new president from the Capitol in his inauguration speech.

For Trump, these are not just slogans. He has repeatedly stated and tweeted that his economic policies will add 25 million new jobs in the next decade. Creating this number of jobs would be a record for any administration. It would be the most jobs created by any president since the 1990s when nearly 23 million jobs were created during the boom years of the Clinton administration. One has to wonder if this is one of Trump’s “alternative facts.” Most mainstream economists view the likelihood of Trump creating anywhere near 25 million new jobs as highly improbable.

Trump’s presidential campaign played to, and took full advantage of Americans economic anxieties. In pre-election polls, many Americans indicated that although they thought they were better off than during the worst years of the Great Recession they certainly did not feel “fully recovered.”

A key to Trump’s surprising victory was the voter turnout in the Rust Belt states. Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin swung from blue to red during election. Trump tweeted, “Rusted out factories are scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation.” It is wishful thinking to believe that more than a very few of these lost manufacturing jobs will ever return to the United States.

There is a general acknowledgment that the U.S. economy is now close to full employment. Janet Yellen, the chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, confirmed this when she recently indicated that the U.S. economy is “close” regarding the Fed’s employment and inflation goals. Since the U.S. is at full employment, one has to wonder who will fill Trump’s promised 25 million jobs, especially with his agenda to tighten immigration.

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