Trump Can Bring Jobs To The Rust Belt By Relocating Federal Agencies

Kyle Sammin and I don’t agree on the trade issue — but we sure do on his suggestion to move federal agencies out of DC. For years I’ve talked about the need for a property value collapse in the DC area since it’s mostly funded by tax dollars. Here is Kyle Sammin:

Keeping federal jobs in Washington concentrates wealth and increases government cost. If Trump wants to help the Midwest, he should change that.

Donald Trump rose to electoral success in 2016 on a tidal wave of support from the Midwest, a region other Republican presidential candidates have struggled in vain to win since the 1980s. His wins in Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan did not represent a victory for standard Republican ideas of free trade, low taxes, and smaller government. Instead, they represented faith in his promise to return prosperity to the former industrial heartland, and a lack of trust in Hillary Clinton to do the same. What remains to be seen now is whether Trump can deliver on his promises, or if he will join a long list of establishment politicians who have sworn to revitalize that region and failed.

. . .

Most times, when a President says he created jobs, what he means is that jobs were created while he occupied the White House. Maybe he worked with Congress to make conditions more favorable for job creation, but more often he is just the beneficiary of worldwide economic trends.

The exception to this is in the creation of jobs through actually hiring people to work for the federal government. Here a President can actually affect the number and, more importantly, the location of the jobs the federal government provides. The best way for Trump to enact a better federal employment program that is fiscally conservative enough to satisfy a Republican Congress, therefore, is not to create more federal jobs but to move existing ones away from the Washington area and out into the rest of the country, especially in those areas that have been hurt most by long-term unemployment.

Read more: The Federalist

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