From Mick Mulvaney, President Trump’s chief of staff:¹
We are desperate — desperate — for more people. We are running out of people to fuel the economic growth that we’ve had in our nation over the last four years. We need more immigrants.
Technically, this is true. GDP growth has two components: population growth and productivity growth. If population growth slows down, then all that’s left is productivity growth—and there’s little reason to think that Trump even knows what labor productivity is, let alone has any bright ideas about how to improve it.
In fairness, Mulvaney clarified that he thinks we need more legal immigrants, which means that my headline is the worst sort of clickbait. Still, even that’s not especially popular among Trump’s base. Perhaps we’ll get a “clarification” soon?
¹For now, anyway.
