Trump's Fairy Tale About the Fall of Detroit
AUG 9, 2016 8:15 AM EDT
By Paula Dwyer
Donald Trump all but claims the economic policies of President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton caused Detroit's 2013 bankruptcy. In a Monday speech in the Motor City, the Republican nominee said he'd cut taxes, eliminate regulations and negotiate more advantageous trade deals to revive Detroit and help other struggling cities.
But Trump got both the diagnosis and the prescriptions wrong. Even the United Auto Workers, the union that has seen its ranks decimated because of industry job cuts and foreign competition, seems to agree: It organized protests outside the hall where Trump spoke.
"Detroit" can mean the U.S. auto industry or it can mean the city. Trump conflated the two in his address, even if he barely mentioned automaking. "The city of Detroit is the living, breathing example of my opponent's failed economic agenda," he said, after reeling off statistics on the city's high rates of poverty, crime and unemployment.
The city and the industry are, of course, intertwined, but most analysts long ago concluded that Detroit's 2013 bankruptcy was only partly connected to the auto industry's plight.
The city collapsed mostly because it overpromised what it could deliver to public employees and others, then borrowed too much to try to make good on those deals. All of that, plus a combination of a rapidly declining tax base -- the city has lost 1 million residents since the 1950s -- overreliance on a single industry, a failing education system and municipal corruption meant it couldn't pay off its debts.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-09/trump-s-phony-story-about-the-fall-of-detroit
