SHOCKER! Trump's story about Wisconsin's economy doesn't add up.

I generally avoid the bleatings of the senile dope in the White House, but I wanted to note a couple of claims from our fair President at his propaganda event in Milwaukee yesterday.

He noted income at bottom 10 percent is rising faster than those at the top 10 percent, in what he referred to as a “blue-collar boom.”

“As we begin the year, our economy is booming, wages are rising, poverty is plummeting, crime is falling and America is the envy of the entire world,” Trump said during the opening of his address.

Trump is correct in that wage gains are speeding up among lower-paid workers (well, on a percentage basis anyway). But as economist Ernie Tedeschi notes in a recent article for NPR, a significant reason why has to do with states raising the minimum wage, as much as it is full employment.

Crunching census data, Tedeschi finds workers in the bottom third of the income ladder have enjoyed pay raises of about 4.1% in each of the last two years, compared with 3.6% raises for the top third and 3.9% for all workers.

Minimum wages aren't the only factor. Low-wage workers also have more bargaining power, as employers scramble to fill job openings when unemployment is just 3.5%.

Right now, the economy is doing something extraordinary. People at the bottom of the distribution have actually seen higher wage growth than people at the top and in the middle.

But without the upward pressure of rising minimum wages, Tedeschi estimates the bottom third would have received raises averaging just 3.3%.

"Minimum wages probably are the difference that are kicking up wage growth at the bottom to higher levels than other groups in America," he says.

With that in mind, is Trump asking for a higher minimum wage, if he wants to carry this momentum of higher pay into states like Wisconsin that are still set at $7.25?

HELL NO. While the House passed a bill last July that would have raised the wage to $9.50 by this year, and up to $15 in 2025 , it currently sits in Mitch McConnell’s legislative graveyard in the Senate, and Trump hasn’t said a word to encourage a vote on it ahead of the election.

Trump also claimed to the crowd in Milwaukee that his trade policies were going to work out for Wisconsinites.

Trump called the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal poised for Senate approval “a giant victory for Wisconsin workers, farmers and dairy producers.”

And he said on Wednesday he will sign phase one of a trade deal with China, “massively boosting exports of products made and produced right here in the great state of Wisconsin.”

"Just trust him you rubes !"

I guess you (SUCKERS) gotta go on trust, because I don’t see a lot of evidence of that so far. And not just because more than 10% of the state’s dairy farms went under last year. It’s also because manufacturers and other businesses also weren’t selling as much to other countries in 2019.

November was the second best month of the year for Wisconsin exports in comparison to the state’s 2018 performance, but the value of exports was still down slightly year-over-year.

The state exported $1.82 billion in goods during the month, a drop of $1.6 million or 0.09%. The best month of the year, compared to 2018, was March, when exports decreased 0.07%, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

For the year, Wisconsin exports are down 4.15% as companies contend with trade uncertainty and slower economic conditions in Europe and Asia. The state’s decline is the 21st largest in the country.

The decline puts Wisconsin on pace for $21.78 billion in exports in 2019, a $942.5 million decline from 2018 and the lowest since 2016. Through the first eight month[s] of 2019, Wisconsin was on pace for a nearly $1.2 billion decline in exports.

And it’s not like wages have gone up for manufacturing workers in the state as foreign competition has been limited through tariffs and other trade policy (which should be the goal of such barriers). As the latest “gold standard” Quarterly Census on Employment and Wages shows, Wisconsin manufacturing workers only saw increases that averaged 65 cents an hour in the last 12 months measured, and those workers are still paid less than anywhere else in the Midwest.

Weekly average wage, manufacturing June 2019
Ill. $1,309
Minn $1,262
Mich $1,260
Ohio $1,164
Ind. $1,159
Iowa $1,105
Wis. $1,102

And even with the US having its slowest rate of job growth in 8 years at 1.40%, the country is still adding jobs at a rate 4-5 times faster than Wisconsin is, at least as of the last QCEW report from June.

Yet 55% of Wisconsinites polled in the (overly right-wing modeled) Marquette Poll gave Trump a favorable status about the economy? They shouldn’t, because things aren’t going nearly as well in these parts as Trump was portraying it to be this week.

In fact, if you really dig into it, about the only thing Trump can take “credit” for in Wisconsin’s situation is in preventing a higher minimum wage, and trade policies that have led to losses in our manufacturing-and-dairy heavy state, which has made us fall even further behind the rest of America. And why would you think it would get any better for the rest of 2020, as our economy is at full employment without anything besides stock speculation and home flipping as a means to improve growth going forward?