Trump’s mass deportation plan would be ‘economic disaster’ for US
US consumers are accustomed to cheap goods and services, and the economic rationale for large-scale immigration has been largely avoided.
In a country that relies on a mobile, low-cost workforce, the loss of migrant workers would trigger productivity losses and a new round of inflationary pricing pressure.
“It would be an economic disaster for America and Americans,” says Zeke Hernandez, an economics professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, of Trump’s deportations threat.
“It’s not just the immigrants would be harmed, but we, the people of America, would be economically harmed.”
Baby boomers are retiring, and with fewer immigrants, the workforce will struggle to sustain economic output:
US employers will need to hire 240,000 people a month for the next five years just to replace those who are stepping out, according to one recent study.
Hernandez, author of a recent book, The Truth About Immigration, argues that immigrants contribute talent, investment, innovation, consumption and tax revenue.
