Nobel economist exposes 'scam at the core of MAGA economics'

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump wears a 'Make America Great Again' (MAGA) hat as he attends the commencement ceremony at West Point Military Academy in West Point, New York, U.S., May 24, 2025. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz/File Photo

President Donald Trump's trade adviser, Peter Navarro, is an aggressive supporter of his tariffs as well as his immigration policy. During a recent appearance on Fox Business, Navarro put an anti-immigration spin on the low unemployment numbers of Joe Biden's presidency — claiming, without evidence, that "all of the jobs that we were creating in Biden years were going to illegals" and that under Trump, "50,000 a month is going to be more like what we need."

Navarro was trying to put a positive spin on Trump's mass deportations and declining employment numbers at the same time. But according to liberal economist Paul Krugman, what Navarro succeeded in doing was show that "MAGA economics" are a "scam."

During an appearance on The New Republic's podcast, "The Daily Blast" posted on February 11, Krugman told host Greg Sargent, "The story they were telling is kind of: there's a certain number of jobs, and if a foreigner — if an immigrant — takes it, then it's not there for an American. So immigration translates into unemployment and lost opportunity for native-born Americans, which is not true in theory, not true in history, and not true in the facts. But that is the story they've been telling."

Krugman continued, "Amazingly, they tell it even for highly skilled specialist jobs. They treat jobs in high technology as being like: There are these good jobs in high technology, and if we stop South Asians from coming and taking them, then they'll be available for people from rural America — which is crazy. But that is the story they have been telling to justify what is, at some level, just about racism and ethno-nationalism."

But Navarro, according to Krugman, exposed the fallacies in the Trump Administration's arguments.

Sargent, a former Washington Post columnist, told Krugman, "In other words, I think Navarro here is kind of unmasking — almost accidentally — the core of the MAGA scam about the economy and immigrants. Is that right?"

Krugman responded, "Yeah. I mean, I think he's doing it because he is trying to soften the blow of what is probably going to be, at best, a disappointing job report. But he's not completely ignorant of the economics. It is, in fact, the case — as any Wall Street economist can tell you —that with immigration having collapsed, we're going to see lower job growth in the future. But that is not at all what he and his colleagues were telling us. So the scamminess is fundamental to the whole universe."

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