Here’s President Trump speaking before the National Republican Congressional Committee in March (see #1): “I’m proud to be the president for the workers, not the outsourcers — the president who stands up for Main Street, not Wall Street.” Only in politics can a person sell such economic bunk. It’s class warfare coming out of the mouth of a Republican. Who’d have thunk it?
Earlier, before Trump selected him for the VP slot, J.D. Vance was positioning himself to the left, sharing ideological space with Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. One investor told Financial Times in regards to this possible GOP dynamic duo in 2024 (see #2), “We don’t need a Republican Bernie Sanders.” Indeed. But left-wing demagoguery should not be surprising in a person (Trump) who pinball bounced since 1987 from Republican to Independent to Democrat to Republican to Independent to Republican, with a stopover in the Reform Party in the 1990s and early 2000s, picking up a little Marxian lingo along the way.
But here’s the rub: basing policy on the Marxist dialectic is not a path to prosperity. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, the Kim family of North Korea, and the Castros couldn’t make it work. Not the British Labor Party. The reality is that economic actors are linked in mutual cooperation. As such, Wall Street and Main Street are not at odds. They are in the same boat. One is inextricably tied to the other. When Wall Street sneezes, Main Street catches a cold. The Trump tariff campaign has given Wall Street the chills and small businesses are heading to the medicine cabinet.
For example, watch the video below to see how Trump’s war on imports is turning into a war on Main Street. In the clip, an owner of a small shop selling vintage and new audio gear in Des Moines, Iowa, describes the travails inaugurated by Trump’s chaotic crusade of on-again/off-again and wildly gyrating tariffs. Trump introduced price increases and massive uncertainty, wreaking havoc on any business doing . . . business.
Scrap “Wall Street vs. Main Street”. It’s Trump vs. the Streets.
RogerG
Sources:
1. “Debatable: Trump’s ‘Wall Street vs. Main Street’ argument for tariffs”, Morgan Chalfant, Semafor, 4/20/2025, at https://finance.yahoo.com/news/debatable-trump-wall-street-vs-042439600.html
2. “’We don’t need a Republican Bernie Sanders.’ Why Trump’s choice of Vance spooks Wall Street.”, Morningstar, 7/16/2024, at https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20240716129/we-dont-need-a-republican-bernie-sanders-why-trumps-choice-of-vance-spooks-wall-street