Thanksgiving, Immigrants, and One Big Dumb Wall

“I’m not going to pay for that f**king wall!”  Former Mexican President Vicente Fox, featured above looking incredulous.

Thanksgiving is almost upon us. For some this is a celebration of togetherness and unity, a time in which Americans pay respects to a rich centuries long heritage and give thanks for a life saving dinner immigrant ancestors shared with the indigenous peoples. To others it’s the time of year to remember when a group of light skinned, violent, undocumented aliens hopped off their improvised boats to rape and murder the aforementioned indigenous people and freeload on some meals. It is in the spirit of this wondrous day that I decided to take a look at the net cost of Trump’s build a border wall program.  I figured I’d even give him the benefit of the doubt regarding his claim that he will manage to make the Mexicans pay for the wall. Unfortunately, even with the benefit of the doubt, Trump’s plan will be a disaster for American taxpayers and consumers. This plan is a non-starter in the best of circumstances and an insult to the American people.

Trump isn’t going to get the wall built by military force, that would be certifiably insane. If Trump is going to make Mexico pay the net costs of the border wall he’s going to have to do it by repealing/reworking NAFTA and imposing tremendous tariffs on imported Mexican goods. According to MIT the cost of constructing a 50 foot wall across the border would be roughly $38 billion. As per tradingeconomics.com, the total year to year value of imported Mexican goods is roughly $34 billion. This means that if Trump plans to pay off the wall during his time in office he will have to do so by imposing a tariff of roughly 28% on Mexican goods. While this imposition sounds hefty on its own it becomes ludicrous in the context of international trade. The small East African nation of Djibouti has some of the highest tariffs in the world, and Investopedia reports that their average tariff sits at 17.6%. This means that Trump would have to outdo the highest tariffs in the world by more than half in order to recoup the cost during his guaranteed four years in office.

This brings up a secondary problem. If we impose a 28% tariff on Mexican imports then you can bet your bottom dollar that three things are going to happen. First, that cost will be passed on the the average American consumer. This will screw the very people that the wall is supposedly in place to protect. There’s no way you can increase tariffs without raising prices in their intended market Second, this tariff is going to decrease the volume of imported goods from Mexico as their captains of industry search for less openly hostile markets. Considering that we’d be running the most prohibitive tariffs on earth, finding a better buyer should be trivial. Between decreased U.S. domestic purchasing power and the diminished incentives for Mexican vendors to move their goods north, that $34 billion in imports is going to shrink, and fast. This means to remain cost neutral the tariffs will have to be raised each year to compensate for rapidly decreasing cross country flows. In piloting terms, this is a death spiral. Third, the suddenly hostile trading relationship between Mexico and its largest trading partner will cause the Mexican economy to contract. This rapid contraction of the Mexican economy will encourage huge numbers of people to flee Mexico in search of better jobs. Guess where they’re going.

In the holiday spirit, I’m still feeling generous, and we’ll begin the next section with Trump’s estimation of the cost illegal immigrants impose on society, and I’ll imagine Trump gets the Mexican government to pay for the wall, and to top it all off a magical fairy sprinkles all-purpose econosolve over the whole sordid affair which suddenly eliminates all the possible costs associated with actually building the wall. The plan still stinks high enough to vault a 50 foot concrete barrier.

Trump says that the total cost of illegal immigrants to the United States is $113 billion yearly. According to Politifact this number is “mostly false,” but we’ll ignore that rating as a conspiracy by the liberal media elite, so $113 billion it is. This sounds like a fairly substantial number so let’s compare the cost to the contribution illegals make to net American wealth. According to Harvard economist Jorge Borjas the average American’s wealth has increased by 1% thanks to the contributions of illegals. For net wealth to increase the contributions to our economy have to exceed the tax burden on a year to year basis. Time reports that the total wealth of the U.S. is $84.9 trillion. The 1% that the average American enjoys then comes out to $849 billion in the aggregate. I’d much rather have that $849 billion in wealth gained from illegal immigrant labor than the $113 billion in costs, but we’ll ignore that $849 billion too, and just for giggles we’ll forget about the costs associated with deporting 11 million people too. Now it’s time to total up the cost of this plan versus the plan’s own enforcement mechanism, prison.

Trump plans mandatory imprisonment for anyone who violates his new big wall.  The average cost per illegal immigrant according to Trump sits around $11,000 a head, and let’s say that the new plan cuts the number of illegal immigrants by half. This brings the number of illegals down to 5.5 million. America hasn’t had that many illegals since there were 2 billion fewer people on earth. We’ll pretend that Trump has a 100% incarceration rate on the hypothetical half of all remaining illegals, because what good is his plan without an increase in the number of brown people put in prison? The average cost of imprisoning someone in America is, according to the NY Times, $31,286 per inmate. This means that even if you deport half for free and incarcerate the remainder, the tax burden imposed by illegals goes up nearly 50%. This doesn’t account for the costs associated with having to build enough prisons to compensate for more than tripling the U.S. prisoner population. Someone is going to have to pay for the new facilities to house that three fold increase in prisoners. That someone is going to be the U.S. taxpayer.

Trump’s plan is indisputably ridiculous.  It is one that loses the American taxpayer money even with the power of wishful thinking, ignorance, and magical fairy dust on its side. There are three reasons to support the wall in earnest. The first possibility is that someone hasn’t adequately assessed the net costs of such a project. The second reason is that someone hates immigrants more than you like money. The third reason to support this plan is if you’re a comically evil real estate developer with government ties strong enough to guarantee that you receive the contracts on building big walls and bigger prisons. I however don’t think that this Trumped up plan is something the President Elect supports in earnest. I think Trump knows that he can gain power with this outright farce. He knows that he can get unfairly abused American workers to march in lockstep with the most racist and xenophobic elements of our society.  He knows he can profit off of others misery and marginalization.

So tomorrow, on a historically troublesome day intended to celebrate a welcome hand extended by the locals to help out our tempest tossed immigrant ancestors, I give thanks to Trump. Thanks for lying to the people who elected you, thanks for using racism and xenophobia as a means to gain power, and thanks for passing the gravy, but I’m having salsa with my turkey this year.

#turkeysalsa

Photo in the common domain attributed only to el fotógrafo known as Gus.

I promise next article will be about something other than Trump or the election.