Yesterday, Donald Trump was in Miami speaking to the National Associations of Home Builders. However, he wasn’t speaking to the corporate executives at the convention; he was speaking to the “working guys,” and women, who actually build the homes.
Trump told the NAHB that home ownership is the American dream and his goal is to keep jobs and wealth in America. “Our goal is to keep wealth in America,” he explained, stressing he wants to do the same for jobs.
“Home ownership is at its lowest rate in 51 years,” explained Trump, which translates into fewer construction jobs. Construction is one of the few well-paying middle income jobs that can’t be sent offshore—unless you count the American workers displaced by illegal and legal alien workers.
“Housing equals jobs,” Trump said to resounding applause.
“Home building is very close to my heart,” the New Yorker explained to his audience, noting that his father built homes in Queens and Brooklyn.
Trump then highlighted his background as the son of a homebuilder, Fred Trump.
As Ina Cordle reported for The Miami Herald, “I have great respect for homebuilders,” he said during his speech. “I grew up with a homebuilder—he’s a really good homebuilder—and I used to sit at his knee with blocks, and watch my father or listen to my father negotiate on the phone with plumbers and sheet-rockers and electricians. … I learned tremendous things from a homebuilder.”
Trump’s comments reminded voters once again of his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention:
My dad, Fred Trump, was the smartest and hardest-working man I ever knew. I wonder sometimes what he’d say if he were here to see this tonight. It’s because of him that I learned, from my youngest age, to respect the dignity of work and the dignity of working people.
He was a guy most comfortable in the company of bricklayers, carpenters and electricians, and I have a lot of that in me also. I love those people.
Trump also hit another important theme of his economic message: over-regulation.
Saying he was “so comfortable” with those in the room, Trump, as Cordle reported, zeroed in on issues of concern to the industry, particularly regulations that he said today represent 25 percent of the cost of building a home. He told the audience, dressed mostly in sport shirts and sundresses, that he would declare a temporary moratorium on new agency regulations and lower the cost for homebuilders. “We should get it down to about 2 percent,” he said. “It’s ridiculous.”
“Over-regulation, which is a big problem, is costing our economy $2 trillion a year,” Trump said, while also blasting frivolous lawsuits against builders.
And Donald Trump is right.
To put that number in perspective, $2 trillion is a little more than the approximate market capitalization of Apple ($551 billion), Microsoft ($445 billion), Amazon ($362 billion), ExxonMobil ($356 billion) and Google ($200 billion) combined.
Meaning that if that cash was annually put back into the productive economy instead of government regulation we could literally capitalize five world class employers every year.
Put another way, Wal-Mart, America’s largest private employer, has a market cap of approximately $227 billion, the company employs 2,200,000 workers—with the $2 trillion in regulatory drag pumped back into the private economy we could capitalize four companies the size of Wal-Mart—every year.
Trump’s message was received loud and clear by those in the room and he received a standing ovation at the conclusion of his speech.
But like we said at the top of this article, the 900 executives in the room weren’t really Trump’s audience.
The real point of Donald Trump’s speech, one that he has made over and over, is destruction of America’s middle class, wrought over the past two decades and continuing today, wasn’t caused by some inevitable, pre-destined economic force—it was caused by the leaders we elected and entrusted with our government who legislated the uneconomic regulations that add 25 percent to the cost of a home.
And it was those voters, who aren’t swinging a hammer or putting up drywall and whose lives have been shattered by the economic disaster of the past decade, to whom Trump was speaking.
Trump’s economic message was largely overshadowed by his (accurate) comments that Obama and Hillary Clinton created ISIS, but with 94 million Americans out of the workforce it is by far his most powerful weapon in the battle for the White House. {eoa}
George Rasley is editor of ConservativeHQ, a member of American MENSA and a veteran of over 300 political campaigns, including every Republican presidential campaign from 1976 to 2008. He served as lead advance representative for Governor Sarah Palin in 2008 and has served as a staff member, consultant or advance representative for some of America’s most recognized conservative Republican political figures, including President Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp. He served in policy and communications positions on the House and Senate staff, and during the George H.W. Bush administration he served on the White House staff of Vice President Dan Quayle.
See an error in this article?
To contact us or to submit an article
