http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/EconomistLetter11012016.pdf
His statements reveal a deep ignorance of economics and an inability to listen to credible experts... If elected, he poses a unique danger to the functioning of democratic and economic institutions, and to the prosperity of the country. "
Nasdaq closed at 7505.7 yesterday. Nasdaq closed at 5058.4 on November 4, 2016.
He claims he will eliminate the fiscal deficit, but has proposed a plan that would decrease tax revenue by $2.6 to $5.9 trillion over the next decade according to the non-partisan Tax Foundation.
Current CBO estimates put the 2018 FY deficit as -2.3%, the smallest deficit since 2008. If all of the administration's fiscal proposals pass, the non-partisan CBO estimates that the deficit would increase to -2.4%, the smallest deficit since 2008. This is driven by a 6% increase in revenue in FY2018 while the growth in outlay was same as expected. (source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/CBO_Scoring_of_2018_Budget_-_Table_3.png)
He has misled voters in states like Ohio and Michigan by asserting that the renegotiation of NAFTA or the imposition of tariffs on China would substantially increase employment in manufacturing. In fact, manufacturing’s share of employment has been declining since the 1970s and is mostly related to automation, not trade.
1. Manufacturing employment dropped from 17.5 million in 2000 to 12.5 million in 2011, a decrease of 5 million. Acemoglu, Autor et al. (2016 JLE) estimate that import competition from China alone was responsible for between 2.0-2.4 million of such losses. https://economics.mit.edu/files/9811. Pierce and Schott (2016 AER) find that U.S. technology-related job losses are mostly trade-induced rather than "natural". http://faculty.som.yale.edu/peterschott/files/research/papers/pierce_schott_pntr_20150301.pdf
2. Caliendo et al. (2014) estimate that the overall welfare impact of NAFTA is around 0%, with benefits to consumers offset by large losses to affected workers. Caliendo et al. (2015) similarly estimate that the overall welfare impact of normalized trade with China is around 0%. Autor et al. (2016, unpublished) estimate that the impact of Chinese trade explains most of the regional variation in GOP vote share from 2000 to 2016.
3. So where does the alleged consensus that automation was responsible for most manufacturing job losses come from? This was the one study that claimed "88% of job losses are due to automation", written by a non-publishing economist and a MBA: https://conexus.cberdata.org/files/MfgReality.pdf. You can check their methodology at p.4-5: they calculate the number of workers that would have been needed for generating 2010 output with 2000 productivity levels, subtract that from actual number of workers in 2010, and then take this figure as job losses due to productivity. In other words, their specification assumes an exogenous shock of 10% productivity increase in a particular sector