Last December, in Part I of this series, I observed that incomes were rising under Trump.

But the increase was rather anemic and I warned that Trump’s trade taxes were having a negative impact.

Trump is undermining himself (and undermining the GOP) with protectionism. …The key thing to understand is that protectionism doesn’t cause inflation (look at the Federal Reserve if you want to assign blame). Instead, Trump’s taxes on trade are causing the economy to become less efficient and less competitive. So protectionism doesn’t effect the overall price level, but it does hamper income growth and it does make some things more costly.

More than eight months have passed since that column, so let’s see if the numbers are getting better or worse.

Sadly, the latest data from the Department of Labor’s Employment Cost Index is not encouraging.

It’s not good when those lines are sloping down and close to (or below) zero.

But that’s not the only grim news. We also find discouraging data when looking at the Department’s latest data on Real Earnings.

Those are not good numbers.

What do they mean? The best case scenario for Trump is that the economy is weak.

A more realistic scenario is that ordinary people probably feel they are stuck on a treadmill. Which helps to explain Trump’s low approval ratings. And also helps to explain why Republicans are in trouble in this November’s mid-term elections.

I’ll close by reiterating a point from my recent column about Trump’s desperate and goofy proposal for a $5,000 giveaway, when I cited some very wise words from the Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Trump is resorting to this because voters are unhappy about inflation and don’t think his economic policies have helped them. His tariff tax increases are a big part of the reason. If he repealed those, he’d give the country an economic dividend without spending a dime.

Amen.

The bad news is that Trump single-handedly caused economic anemia with his protectionist folly.

The good news is that he can single-handedly give the economy a shot of adrenaline by canceling his tariffs.

But the worst news is that Trump won’t do that. So it will be poetic justice when Democrats (quite likely) take control of Congress and use committee investigations to make his life miserable. And probably impeach him again just for the fun of it.

If that’s all they did, I would be amused. Unfortunately, those same Democrats are now in a crazy socialism phase, so they’ll compound the damage of Trump’s protectionism with all sorts of other foolish ideas.

Time to escape to Argentina where there is a president lowering trade taxes instead of increasing them (and differing from Trump in other ways as well)!