News & Commentary

November 10, 2016

Melissa Greenberg

Melissa Greenberg is a student at Harvard Law School.

In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s shocking electoral victory, the analysis of his win continues.  The New York Times reports that Donald Trump’s support among white, working-class men carried him to the presidency.  While Hillary Clinton’s campaign believed that their coalition of minorities and women voters would carry the day, their lack of support among white men without college degrees proved problematic for the campaign.  Exit polls indicated that this year’s gender gap “could be the largest in 60 years” with men choosing Trump by 12 percentage points and women choosing Clinton by 12 percentage points.

President-elect Trump has released his plan for his first 100 days.  Trade is featured prominently.  Trump has stated that he will renegotiate or pull out of NAFTA and abandon pursuit of the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement.  Despite Trump’s focus on trade, the Boston Globe warns that Trump’s promise to bring manufacturing jobs back could be difficult to put into practice.  Citing a statistic from Ball State University’s Center for Business and Economic Research, the Globe states that automation and other innovations resulted in an 88 percent decrease in factory positions.  Other items with impacts for workers on Trump’s list include a federal hiring freeze and ending limits on American energy production.  Read Trump’s plan for his first 100 days here.

Yesterday, Politico reported on its conversations with labor law and policy authorities regarding the ramifications of Trump’s election for workers.  These experts highlighted changes on immigration policy, the introduction of anti-organizing measures, a diminishment of labor standards, and the appointment of anti-regulatory judicial nominees as potential effects of Trump’s victory.  Read more here.  Some of these changes require the participation of Congress, but others, such as stronger immigration enforcement, President-elect Trump could enact alone.

One issue that Trump and the Republican Congress are likely to agree on is the repeal of Obamacare.  Sarah Kliff at Vox lays out the means by which Trump and the newly-elected Congress could accomplish this campaign promise.  A House bill introduced in 2015, H.R. 3762, provides a template for the legislation Republicans could use.  H.R. 3762 calls for ending the provision of tax credits to middle and low-income Americans to purchase health insurance and simultaneously, cancelling Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.  This bill fits the procedural requirements of a budget process called reconciliation, and therefore, it obviates the need for Republicans to earn 60 votes to prevent a Democratic filibuster in the Senate.  In fact, last year, Congress passed this bill, but President Obama vetoed it.  The Congressional Budget Office found that this measure would result in 22 million Americans losing health care coverage two years after its enactment.  Republicans could pass a similar bill in the new Congress.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell designated the repeal of Obamacare as “pretty high on our agenda.”

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