The Republican Party has once again taken control of all three parts of the U.S. government, which goes against the predictions of many election analysts and forecasts. This is a stark reminder of this Listverse piece from five years ago. It is highly probable that President-elect Trump will soon discover that his campaign had a poisoned chalice from President Biden and Vice President Harris. In fact, Kamala Harris will likely be as relieved by her defeat as John Kerry was by his defeat in 2004 by the time the 2008 recession hit, as it prevented both of them from leaving behind much worse legacies. For example, President Herbert Hoover is more well-known and despised in history for the Great Depression that occurred during his administration and was made worse by his policies than Al Smith is for losing to him in 1928. For the purposes of this list, we're assuming that Trump will fulfill his campaign pledges and that, once in power, he will be able to control the United States. The United States government, including the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the Supreme Court, will not impose any restrictions on the Trump Administration's activities. Physical reality, prevailing economic conditions, and those who reside beyond the president's direct authority will be the primary concerns.Related: Ten Horrible & Violent Political Feuds from American History
Backfire of Tariffs
Many Republican members of Congress objected to the imposition of up to 15% tariffs in September 2018 on imports worth approximately $200 billion from China. The incumbent party lost control of the House of Representatives in November of that year, frequently losing in areas that were the subject of retaliatory Chinese tariffs.
When the Phase One agreement was revealed in early 2020, it signaled that China would lift the retaliatory tariffs it had imposed on American goods and start purchasing them in greater quantities again. According to reports, commerce between China and the United States was remained below 2018 levels as of February 2022. Trump ran on a platform of imposing 60%–100% tariffs on Chinese and European imports in 2024. Based on current indications, American consumers will bear the expenses if Trump implements any of his proposed tariffs. All of them, about $80 billion. Raising the prices of imported goods does not encourage domestic manufacturers to cut their prices, and domestic workers will legitimately be able to demand higher wages to keep up with rising living expenses as a result of the tariffs, even if they do have the purported side effect of encouraging investment in domestic suppliers. Economic inflation will worsen as a result of this. In fact, President Biden's decision to maintain the tariffs on China should have served as a warning to MAGA voters that they were a bad idea [1].
Emigration of Americans
Even if it is cliche to advise individuals to leave the country if they disagree with election outcomes, many wealthy Americans are acting as though they have taken that advice to heart. In fact, according to a poll by Arton Capital, 53% of millionaires planned to leave the nation following the election, regardless of the outcome, as CNBC reported on November 1, 2024. Nonetheless, 53% of people who make more than $215,000 annually identified as left-leaning, which increases their incentive to act given the outcomes. Now, it may sound like meaningless rhetoric, but it's evidence of bipartisan action. Between 2016 and 2020, American emigration to Europe surged, and by 2022, it had risen by 28% from the year before the last national election. More than 60% of Gen Z Americans surveyed in July 2024 said they would rather relocate abroad than remain in the United States. The wealthy among them are increasingly adopting an investment strategy known as the "golden visa," which grants them indefinite residency as long as they invest up to $200,000 in the economy of the host nation. Ironically, Mexico is seeing an increase in American expats, given how the threat of illegal immigrants from Mexico was a major theme in Trump's presidential campaign. Approximately 1.7 million Americans immigrated to Mexico, more than any other country in the world. The number of immigrants rose by 70% between 2019 and 2022, with many of them being pensioners who took their social security benefits with them. Even though some of them are just bitter losers, that is a significant number of people withdrawing their money from America. A few postings will address one of the main causes of these migrations to Mexico.
Lack of Ammunition
Many home audiences defend the long-term U.S. commitment in Gaza and Ukrainian defense by pointing out that much of the equipment the U.S. military ships abroad is outdated. That justification may be sound, but during the past few years, there have been numerous reports that the U.S. ammunition supply is getting dangerously limited. The Ukrainian military uses up the equivalent of the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant's annual production output each month, according to a National Public Radio report in April 2023. These kinds of pressures and limited production outlets are surprisingly common: in 2019, one plant in Lake City, Missouri, produced 85% of the U.S. military's small-arm ammunition. The U.S. government had to purchase a large number of weapons on behalf of Ukraine because output was so much below demand. Many vendors have been able to undercut the U.S. military on pricing since it is an obviously highly motivated buyer. In general, producing missiles is quite costly and time-consuming, to the point where even the military's infamously huge budget causes significant reluctance to spend it. Supporting the battle in Gaza in January 2024, the U.S. In order to break the Red Sea blockade, the Navy launched 94 Tomahawk missiles at Yemen. Yemen maintained the blockade, and according to Foreign Policy, the United States depleted its entire supply of Tomahawk missiles, which took two years to build and were not expected to be restocked for 2024 because the weapons can cost up to $6 million each. [3] Speaking of problems with the U.S. military, no executive order or Department of Government Efficiency will address supply and cost challenges like these.
Shortages in Military Recruitment
The U.S. military is a major source of strength for the U.S. dollar, but it has long underperformed recruitment targets. The Army Times reported in 2018 that the U.S. military reached fewer than 28,000 recruits during a period in 2017 when the goal was 40,000, resulting in a readjustment of the recruiting goal down by thousands. Those who believe that these issues are due to mistrust of President Biden or the military under liberal control in general should keep in mind that this was also an issue during Trump's first term. Despite implementing several incentive programs, including sign-on bonuses and placing recruits in bases close to their hometowns where they may presumably be able to recruit their friends, Fortune reported that the same issue had taken place in 2018 and that it failed once more in 2019. These staffing shortages exacerbate actual material issues. Newsweek revealed in 2023 how the U.S. The Navy is dealing with ongoing ship repair issues. The need to place several of them on full-time deployment for months in areas like the Middle East, where they are supposed to defend Israel, has only made this worse. Even if Trump were to inspire all the military branches to recruit as many people as they need in 2025, there would still be a backlog of almost ten years of maintenance that would need to be done to bring the armed forces back up to speed because, of course, the U.S. Throughout the Biden years, the Armed Forces often failed to meet its recruitment targets [4].
Dangerously Underprivileged Residents
This is the main cause of the large number of American expatriates in Mexico and one of the two most important talking topics of the Trump campaign in 2024. If you know where to look, you can spot the warning signs that trouble is about to move up the economic ladder and into more benign corners of the economy. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, half of Americans said they were having difficulty paying for healthcare alone, and a quarter had postponed medical treatment because of the cost in the previous year. For instance, due to tighter customer spending, Walmart reduced its Christmas orders by more than 80% in November 2024 compared to 2022. Simply put, the working class will no longer be able to afford many of the goods and services that are necessary to keep the businesses that make the top 10% wealthy open. Trump's proposal to lower income taxes may seem like a good idea, but it actually threatens to widen the gap by giving disproportionately more money to those who are already wealthy (40.1% of U.S. households pay no income tax), which would require reducing government assistance for those who are already impoverished or creating inflation through deficit spending [5].
Insolvency of Social Security and Medicare
The Trump campaign has made the pledge that Social Security and Medicare will not be tampered with more than once since 2015. It's not surprising that Medicare was a successful pledge given that it provides coverage to 51 million Americans at less than one-seventh the overhead of commercial insurance plans. Regardless of the president's intentions, it is possible that major, unfavorable changes will be made to Medicare coverage. In fact, senators from his own party, like Florida's Rick Scott, have noted that Medicare's Hospital Trust Fund will run out of money by 2028 if current spending trends continue. In response, some have suggested reducing coverage by roughly 24% or increasing payroll taxes by up to 15% (of their existing rate, not the 0% rate that Trump has suggested changing them to). Another option is to reduce Medicare total by 8%, as proposed by the Congressional Budget Office. Trump has been certain that he will not make any changes to social security, another impending federal program. The Social Security Administration and other organizations have predicted that the social security reserves won't become insolvent until 2035, so it's safe to assume that Trump can dismiss this as a problem for a future administration. However, nonpartisan organizations like the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget have argued that under Trump's plan, social security insolvency would be both accelerated and more severe (33% reduction in benefits instead of a 17% cut). Insolvency would still be projected to occur in 2031, well after Trump's constitutional final term, but still early enough in 2028 to make many retirees much more anxious than otherwise [6].
Bubble in Real Estate
In the post-COVID era, there are two ironies surrounding real estate: residential real estate is experiencing an affordability crisis, while commercial real estate is experiencing a shortage of revenue. Regarding commercial real estate, the Harvard Business Review stated in July 2024 that over $1 trillion in loans to office real estate firms are due over the course of the following two years. The percentage of loans that were nonperforming—that is, not being repaid—had quadrupled from.54% to 1.25% as of July 2024. This is particularly concerning because the rate was 0.87% just prior to the Great Recession of 2008. This trend appears unlikely to change, with 19.6% of office space in cities unoccupied in 2023. As noted by Axios in January 2024, this means that local and state governments will shift a greater portion of the tax burden onto residential properties. That is, in addition to the taxes that will need to be changed because of the income tax cuts made by the Trump administration. Moving on to the topic of residential property, Fox Business raised concerns about the sharp rise in foreclosures across the country in March 2024. Compared to February 2023, there was a 51% increase in South Carolina. There was a 46% increase in Pennsylvania and a 50% increase in Missouri. They actually fell 46% in New York, so this is by no means a problem that is equally dispersed. However, as previously stated, there is little reason to think that residential landlords and homeowners do not face a crippling property tax increase in the near future, given the increasing number of vacant office spaces and the numerous businesses that are defaulting on their loans. For those who do not own a home, the possibility of ever owning a home appears to be fading. In June 2024, NBC News reported that the median home sold for $70,000 more than the county's income could afford. Marketwatch then reported in July of the same year that homes had become even less affordable in the second quarter in 98.8% of the United States. Trump's plans to address this amount include lowering mortgage rates, deregulating construction standards, opening more federal land for construction, and reporting mass deportations to make homes available to illegal immigrants. Unless he wants to drastically raise wages for home builders, he is likely to make exceptions for the roughly 31% of illegal immigrants who work in the construction industry. Bush deported 10 million illegal immigrants, which did not help the housing market. Furthermore, it's hard to account for how lower-paid illegal immigrants are building up the wealth to purchase homes or obtain loans for them, so it's unlikely that many of them are homeowners. They are also not the owners of the approximately six million vacant American homes, of which 1.7 million are in Florida, a state known for having a high concentration of illegal immigrants. Therefore, it appears that these errors will not solve the problems they do want to fix and will not address many of the biggest real estate challenges [7].
BRICS's Ascent
Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa form the economic alliance known as BRICS. The goal is to avoid tariffs like those imposed by Trump and Biden, as well as the United States' power to impose sanctions on nations, especially China and Russia, for opposing American authority in Taiwan and Ukraine. Even though each of these nations has economic issues that at least match those of the United States, taken as a whole, they pose a far greater threat than President Trump or the media generally portray. Despite the U.S. dollar's seemingly unstoppable and unassailable position as the world's reserve currency since the collapse of the Soviet Union, BRICS is making alarming strides. The dollar, which had previously been used for around 100% of oil trades, was eliminated by BRICS from 20% of them in 2023. Far from a majority, but a significant undermining of a hegemon. Just as tariffs on various consumer goods would hurt consumer prices, other nations would harm tariffs as a source of income if they simply stopped trading with them, which would reduce demand for homegrown goods. Trump has demonstrated a great deal of willingness to reach across the aisle to BRICS countries, but the tariffs he imposed in 2018 are a significant part of the reason BRICS has the power it does in the first place, so he might be convinced that concessions to them represent essentially a capitulation. That seems increasingly likely, as the International Monetary Fund predicted in October 2024 that BRICS would be a larger driver of economic growth over the next five years than G-7 countries.
Population Aging at an Increasing Rate
The topic of dropping birth rates in the United States has lately been covered by Listverse, but there are also significant issues at the opposite end of the age range. Many professions are attempting to raise retirement ages since they are already severely understaffed. An bid to raise the obligatory retirement age for airline pilots to 67, for instance, was recently defeated in May 2024. In addition, it is anticipated that one in five Americans will soon be of retirement age. Not only do more individuals leaving the workforce raise demand for goods and services, but it also speeds up the expansion of Social Security and Medicare, accelerating their dates of insolvency. This is particularly true as younger generations appear to be aging and losing health more quickly than our existing retirees. Once more, no single administration is to blame for this, but it will be extremely challenging to solve without implementing very radical and unpopular policies, like the frequently touted Republican plan to raise the retirement age [9].
Food Scarcity
The cost of food caused many people to be dissatisfied with the performance of the incumbent party, which brings us to our final major reason for Trump's reelection. Trump's administration promises to lower those costs through deregulation and tax cuts. Let's put aside worries that deregulation will result in more recalled contaminated food and more poisoned people. The overall food supply in America is a little more precarious than it may appear. Crop yields in 2024 were poor, but that doesn't mean there will be famine or anything similar. It was so poor that farmers predicted it would be the worst harvest since 2007, according to the Farm Journal's AG Economist poll. This should have been a warning sign for the DNC. Natural calamities caused crop production to plummet by $21 billion in 2023, so this poor farming condition is not new. Republicans in solid red areas are supporting the allegations that 2022 was also a particularly poor harvest, with droughts in California and Hurricane Ian in Florida causing damage to orange orchards. Texas farms have been experiencing water shortages for a while, according to a public statement made by Agricultural Commissioner Sid Miller in September 2024. In response, he signed an executive order on October 17, 2024, permitting Texas ranchers and farmers to draw water from the Rio Grande. Even if everything goes according to plan, many farms will incur significant costs, which will eventually be passed on to customers. The evidence suggests that this is not a temporary situation, given that up to 80% of Texas experienced severe drought conditions in 2022 and 2023 as well. To put it briefly, for many voters who voted for the Republican Party for economic reasons, the party switch appears to be little more than a band-aid solution [10].