Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill will help wreck the economy

Trump is pouring money into policing migration (Pic: Alex Brittenham in LA)

£140 billion—that’s the amount of money currently earmarked for “immigration enforcement” in Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act which is currently going through the United States Congress.

This figure represents more than a five-fold increase in spending on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and related bodies.

This vast amount of money could be used for good purposes, like boosting Medicaid. Instead, it is being used in a way that will undermine the US economy and may even help to wreck it.

Trump has been seeking to inflame racism against migrants for many years. Racism is always present in capitalist society as the ruling class seeks to consolidate identities that cut across the class divide and potentially pitch workers against other workers.

Trump and the far right have been successful in stoking up anti-migrant racism because of the legacy of neoliberalism in the US. This has seen the wealthy grow much wealthier while for millions of working-class Americans, stable jobs have disappeared, incomes have stagnated or worse and life has become much more challenging.

Trump has exploited the widespread disillusionment with the US economy by posing as the anti-woke, anti-establishment, anti-Wall Street candidate. He claims he will stop the rest of the world “ripping off” the US—hence the tariffs. And he says he will stop migrants stealing “real Americans” jobs by deporting 11 million undocumented migrants.

Trump is now in trouble politically. His popularity has fallen more quickly and to a lower level than any other president since records began. His promise to be the great dealmaker for peace has run into the sand in Ukraine, Gaza and now Iran. He’s become known as president Taco—Trump Always Chickens Out—because of his reversals over tariffs.

The dollar is falling in value, making imports even more expensive on top of the price rises and shortages caused by tariffs. The economy is slowing. Projections for growth have been halved.

This is the context in which Trump is doubling down on deportations.

But it will be very difficult for Trump to keep his promise to deport 11 million migrants. To achieve that over the four years of his presidency, 230,000 migrants would have to be deported every month for four years. In April, Ice managed to deport just over 17,000 migrants. That’s 17,000 too many but is indicative of just how huge, disruptive and extremely difficult to achieve his deportation promise is going to be.

Trump has claimed that he is for Main Street rather than Wall Street, for the ordinary hard-working American rather than the super-rich. Nothing could be further from the actual truth.

The Big Beautiful Bill is going to make everyone in the top 10 percent about £9,000 better off every year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The poorest 10 percent are going to lose some £1,200 each in disposable income.

Those tax cuts for the rich are very likely to see the already enormous federal budget deficit grow very much larger. This is spooking those rich investors who have to finance that government debt through buying government bonds.

Trump’s determination to deport undocumented migrants will make the budget deficit even worse. It’s not just the extra spending on deportations—it’s the fact that undocumented migrants work and thereby produce goods and services which in turn provide taxes to the federal government.

Estimates vary as to the enormous economic damage the deportation policy will inflict on the US economy. One estimate claims that the US economy will be 7 percent smaller than it would have been without the deportations. Another estimate suggests that the policy of deportations will lead to the loss of over £1.03 trillion in income to the federal budget. This is a potential economic disaster.

There is an ever-widening budget deficit. There is higher inflation coming from tariffs on US imports. The value of the dollar is also falling, making imports more expensive as foreign investors take fright from Trump’s economic policies. And the economy is slowing as investors are reluctant to invest when faced with Trump’s unpredictable and volatile decision-making. 

Trump’s horrendous deportation policy is going to be economically disastrous. That is something Democrats might have exploited by repeating the fact that migrants, whether documented or undocumented, grow the economy. It’s the rich not the migrants who have been ripping off US workers.

But the Democrats can’t say that because they defend the same capitalist system and have themselves overseen tens of thousands of deportations when they were in the White House. Trump himself appears to be tempted to head ever further down the authoritarian and racist road as his policies fail elsewhere.

We have to hope that serious organisation posing a radical socialist alternative begins to emerge out of the fantastic resistance shown in recent days to Trump’s racism.