I'm not going to discuss everything Trump wants to do here, because that would take too long, but I want to focus on this video and his priorities in it.
He starts out by talking about issuing executive orders to bring back our jobs and increase the wealth of workers. Despite my anti work philosophy, this is good coming from a republican, and it's nice to see Trump put the economy front and center. As for his actual proposals:
1. Withdraw from the TPP
All I have to say is YES! This is literally one of the only things I agree with Trump on whole heartedly. The TPP was an awful agreement that would expand neoliberalism and globalization and hurt American workers in my opinion. It was also full of corporate giveaways that would be enshrined in this agreement, like our backward copyright and patent protections. When America's core interest in this agreement seemed to be giving a huge giveaway to the likes or the RIAA and MPAA, you know you got a problem. Trump wants to renegotiate it and make it less harmful to American workers. I have no issues with this.
2. Kill environmental regulations that kill dirty jobs
This is where I start cringing. Trump wants to get rid of regulations that hurt jobs in dirty energy industries like coal and shale mining and production. This is where I can't help but bring up my more anti work philosophy. It sucks that areas like, say, West Virginia, or even parts of Pennsylvania here, are hurt by the phasing out of fossil fuels and the like, but these things are horrible for our health and our environment. And as far as workers go, people would get like black lung from mining this stuff. This is where I think we need to get beyond jobs and think about a basic income, because jobs exist to produce things we need, and Trump wants to bring these jobs back for the sake of people having jobs. If we do want to give these people jobs, why not set up clean energy jobs like the left wanted to do? Appalachia has wind, doesn't it? It's on mountains, right? And I know last time I was up at Wilkes Barre which is in the mountains I saw a lot of wind farms on the mountains there. Why not build more of those and produce cleaner energy that way? What about solar energy? Or heck, what about focusing on infrastructure like Bernie wanted to do? Why focus on continuing the past and these dirty fuels we should be weaning ourselves off of? They hurt the environment, they hurt human beings, they hurt workers. This is a case of having jobs exist for the sake of giving people a paycheck. It's stupid and nonsensical.
3. Eliminating two regulations for every new one to exist
This is stupid unless you're a conservative. I know conservatives like small government and reducing regulations, and this is a way to force fewer regulations to exist, but this rule is stupid. What if you can't find two bad regulations for every regulation you impose? I mean, many of these regulations were put in place to solve problems, and eliminating them will reintroduce these problems. And while some regulations likely do exist for bad reasons, this isn't to say a blanket 1 regulation = 2 eliminated regulations approach is a good one. I'd much prefer a system that looks at getting rid of unnecessary or outdated regulations and replacing them with new ones rather than a blanket "get rid of 2 for 1 new one" thing.
4. Protecting infrastructure from cyberattacks
This is a good idea, but I'm not sure how it related to job growth. The first two clearly did, the third one indirectly did since some argue regulations hurt jobs, but outside of employing some people to protect infrastructure, I'm not sure how this will help the economy. It's not a bad idea, it just seems out of place in this video.
5. Investigating VISA abuse
This is a good thing because businesses do import foreign workers to do jobs cheaper than Americans will do them and this hurts Americans. I am for this.
6. 5 year ban on executive officials lobbying and a lifetime ban on lobbying for a foreign government
This seems like a good idea on the surface. I don't trust Trump's "drain the swamp" mentality one bit, given the people he's appointing to positions, but this doesn't sound bad just looking at it. Some argue it would make lobbying worse by forcing it into the shadows though, so maybe it is one of those ideas that sounds good on the surface but isn't good when thinking it through, and more regulation is likely required to expand the definition of lobbying and make it more universally applied. I could get behind it if a little more thought and research were put into the idea. In its current form it looks like it's done with good intentions, but will likely have negative unintended consequences.
Conclusion
That being said, let me say this, this isn't awful considering what the republican party has been for historically over the last few decades. I don't agree with everything, but I can count at least three of these six proposals I can get behind. Two I think are horribly misguided, and one is kind of iffy and needs improvement. Not a horrible track record for a republican. Normally with republicans, I'd be lucky to find one good idea out of the six presented. This isn't to say that Trump's approach doesn't need improvement, but it's not awful outside of the regulation thing and the whole let's create dirty energy jobs for the sake of giving these people a paycheck thing.
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