Will Trump Pivot Away From Some Of The Worst Aspects Of The MAGA Agenda? Can He Be Forced To?

Georgia Republicans Are Worried He'll Screw Up Biden's Accomplishments

“I can’t guarantee anything. I can’t guarantee tomorrow.”

On Meet The Press, shown last night, Señor T told Kristen Welker “he plans to deport millions of undocumented immigrants and try to end birthright citizenship… [H]e didn’t flinch in saying he will carry out mass deportation of those who are living in the country illegally. First will be convicted criminals, he said. Pressed on whether the targets would go beyond that group, Trump added: ‘Well, I think you have to do it, and it’s a hard— it’s a very tough thing to do. It’s— but you have to have, you know, you have rules, regulations, laws. They came in illegally.’ It’s also possible that American citizens will be caught up in the sweep and deported with family members who are here illegally, or could choose to go. Asked about families with mixed immigration status, where some are in the U.S. legally and some illegally, Trump said, ‘I don’t want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back.’ The expense and logistical complexities of deporting millions of people haven’t deterred him, he said. ‘You have no choice,’ he said. ‘First of all, they’re costing us a fortune. But we’re starting with the criminals, and we’ve got to do it. And then we’re starting with the others, and we’re going to see how it goes.’”

In 2020, Georgia gave Biden a narrow and surprise victory— 2,473,633 (49.47%) to 2,461,854 (49.24%). Biden repaid the state with massive investments from the Inflation Reduction Act, a much of that money in red areas that voted  for Trump— like Dalton in Whitfield County, which have Trump a whopping 69.75% victory. The county is up where Georgia meets North Carolina and Tennessee. It used to be an all-white area but now, attracted to lots of job openings, about a third of the population consists of Latino, many of them immigrants. The county’s member of Congress— who is heavily supported there— is Marjorie Traitor Greene.

Inflation Reduction Act money went into expanding Dalton’s Qcells' solar manufacturing operations. Qcells, invested $2.5 billion in Georgia, including an expansion of its Dalton facility and the establishment of a fully integrated solar supply chain. This expansion created over 2,500 new clean energy jobs in Dalton and contributed to an annual economic impact of over $2 billion in Bartow and Whitfield Counties. The investments not only enhanced local employment opportunities but also positioned economically and socially backward northwestern Georgia as a hub for clean energy manufacturing, while aligning with Biden's goals to accelerate the transition to renewable energy and strengthen domestic production.

Trump, who will soon be taking credit for all of this, isn’t quite there yet. As Greg Sargent wrote last week, Republican officials in the area are worried and making it known that they think Señor T needs to “tweak” his agenda. “In Georgia, for instance,” wrote Sargent, “some local Republicans are openly worried about Trump’s threat to roll back President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. The IRA is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into incentives for the manufacture and purchase of green energy technologies, from electric vehicles to batteries to solar power. Trump endlessly derided this as the ‘green new scam’ and pledged to repeal all uncommitted funds. But now the New York Times reports that Trump supporters like state Representative Beth Camp fear that repeal could destroy jobs related to new investments in green manufacturing plants in the state. Camp worries that this could leave factories in Georgia ‘sitting empty.’ You heard that right: This Republican is declaring that Trump’s threatened actions could leave factories sitting empty.”

One of Trump’s central campaign claims was that Biden’s green energy investments will cause enormous job losses in manufacturing sectors like the traditional auto industry. In reality, the IRA is spurring an outpouring of private investment that’s creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs, many in advanced manufacturing and well suited for people without college degrees— in the very areas that in MAGA folklore were abandoned by liberal and Democratic elites.

Now Republicans are declaring that repeal of the IRA is the thing that could create empty factories. Another Georgia GOP state lawmaker tells the Times that repealing tax credits encouraging the use of solar panels could make local manufacturing “jobs disappear.” House Republicans from districts benefiting from these investments are also primed to resist.

All this directly undercuts one of Trump’s biggest ideas— that government efforts to spur the transition to a sustainable future must by definition existentially threaten the working class, whose well-being depends on tripling down on fossil fuels— and exposes it as the monumental scam that it is.

Something similar is also already happening with Trump’s threat to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. Reuters reports that agriculture interests, which are heavily concentrated in GOP areas, are urging the incoming Trump administration to refrain from removing untold numbers of migrants working throughout the food supply chain, including in farming, dairy, and meatpacking. 

…[I]n Georgia, Trump’s threat of mass deportations is awakening new awareness that undocumented immigrants drive industries like construction, landscaping, and agriculture, reports the Wall Street Journal. In Dalton, a town that backed Trump, fear is spreading that removals could “upend its economy and workforce.”

At this point, someone will argue that all this confirms Trump’s arguments— that these industries and their representatives merely fear losing cheap migrant labor that enables them to avoid paying Americans higher wages. When JD Vance and Trump pushed their lie about Haitians eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, Vance insisted that he opposed the Haitian influx into Midwestern towns because they’re undercutting U.S. workers.

But all these disparate examples of Republicans and GOP areas lamenting coming mass deportations suggest an alternate story, one detailed well by The Times’ Lydia DePillis. In the MAGA worldview, a large reserve of untapped native-born Americans in prime working age are languishing in joblessness throughout Trump country— and will stream into all these industries once migrants are removed en masse, boosting wages.

But DePillis documents that things like poor health and disability are more important drivers of unemployment among this subset of non-college working-age men. Besides, migrants living and working here don’t just perform labor that Americans will not. They also consume and boost demand, creating more jobs.

As Paul Krugman puts it, in all these ways, migrant laborers are “complements” to U.S. workers. Importantly, that’s the argument that these Republicans and industries in GOP areas are really making when they lament mass deportations: Migrant labor isn’t displacing U.S. workers; it’s helping drive our post-Covid recovery and growth. This directly challenges Trump’s zero-sum worldview.

Put it this way: These Republicans and industries are, in a sense, calling Trump’s bluff. Will he actually target those sectors for mass deportations? If he does, we should see a large inflow of U.S. native-born workers into those jobs, right? Will that really take place?

Here’s another possibility: In the end, Trump’s deportation forces may selectively spare certain localities and industries from mass removals. Trump’s incoming “border czar,” Tom Homan, suggests this won’t happen. But a hallmark of MAGA is corruptly selective governance in the interests of MAGA nation and expressly against those who are designated MAGA’s enemies, U.S. citizens included. One can see mass deportations becoming a selective tool, in which blue localities are targeted for high-profile raids— even as Trump triumphantly rants that they are cesspools of “migrant crime” that he is pacifying with military-style force— while GOP-connected industries and Trump-allied Republicans tacitly secure some forbearance.

…At the most basic level, Trump-MAGA “American carnage” mythology holds that reversing the elite-engineered energy transition and purging the nation of millions of undesirable migrants are key to rescuing left-behind areas from stagnation— and rebuilding the foundations of virtuous, long-term working-class flourishing. In reality, the green transition and immigration are potential keys to revitalization. It’s striking to see Republicans already more or less confirming this themselves.

How did Trump become the way he is? What made Trump Trump? Was it the pre-Nazi German immigrant father who poisoned his blood? Many Trump-watchers, though, say Trump turned out the way he is as much due to his relationship with Roy Cohn as to the German blood from his fascist father.