Diana Furchtgott-Roth: Trump Is ‘Not a Conservative… He’s Not Even a Republican’

Diana Furchtgott-Roth of MarketWatch joined host Stephen K. Bannon on Breitbart News Daily Tuesday morning, to discuss a recent column listing four crucial issues where Donald Trump would prove most vulnerable in a general-election matchup against Hillary Clinton.

While her article also listed Trump’s history of switching parties, his idea for a new “wealth tax,” and his position on universal health care as weaknesses, the conversation Tuesday morning focused on free trade.

Other recent guests on Breitbart News Daily have praised Trump for his opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal – including Senator Jeff Sessions and Forbes contributor Eamonn Fingleton – but Furchtgott-Roth strongly criticized Trump’s protectionist ideas, such as leveling high tariffs against goods produced abroad.  She had some reservations about the TPP herself, but in the other direction – she said it had too many restrictions, and didn’t go far enough to create a true free-trade zone.

Furchtgott-Roth and Bannon argued strenuously over the effect of tariffs, which Bannon acknowledged would raise the price of consumer goods – the core contention of free trade advocates.  However, Bannon argued that a small increase in retail prices would be a reasonable price for higher U.S. wages, strong incentives for American companies to keep jobs and capital at home, and a competitive advantage for U.S. companies in the U.S. marketplace.  He said the “Austrian school of economics” had “gutted the United States of its high-paying jobs.”

Furchtgott-Roth contended that free trade not only reduces consumer prices, but also “expands the number of things we can buy,” and that foreign purchases of American goods create a significant number of jobs here.

“Everyone knows free trade raises wealth and increases jobs for everybody,” she declared.  

Bannon countered that as American manufacturing declines under free-trade philosophy, the jobs produced in the U.S. skew towards low-paying service sector positions, with “high-paying value-added jobs” moving overseas.

Furchtgott-Roth also addressed Trump’s position on the government seizure of private property through eminent domain.

“It’s a big negative because he believes in taking away people’s private property,” she said, recalling Trump’s use of the procedure during his business dealings.

“He’s called eminent domain a wonderful thing,” she continued.  “He says if you have a person living in an area that’s not even a good area, and the government wants to build a tremendous economic development where a lot of people are going to be put to work, he thinks it happens to be good.”

“But the problem is that eminent domain leads to corruption and bribery,” Furtchtgott-Roth contended.  “You take away some people’s things, you don’t take away other people’s.  America’s economy is built on the rule of law.  It’s built on private property, and that’s the way America can grow and be great.”

“Trump is not a conservative.  He’s not even a Republican,” she asserted.  “He’s pretending to be that, but that’s not really who he is.  He’s a con man.”

Furchtgott-Roth thought that all of the remaining Republican candidates had better economic plans for nourishing free-market capitalism and wealth creation in the United States.  

“A vote for any of them would be better than a vote for Donald Trump today,” she said, referring to Tuesday’s primary contests.  “They all have a record of conservatism, they all want lower spending, lower taxes… that’s going to get the government off our backs.”

Listen to the full audio of Diana Furchtgott-Roth’s interview below:

Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot Channel 125 weekdays from 6:00AM to 9:00AM EST.