In October 2020, NBC News’ Kristen Welker moderated a presidential debate and asked the candidates whether they would support an increase in the minimum wage. President Joe Biden didn’t hesitate and approved a significant increase over the status quo. The incumbent Republican party was much more circumspect.
Donald Trump initially responded by saying that raising the minimum wage “should be a state option” – a curious position, considering it has always been a state option – before adding that he would “consider” an increase “to some extent” ”.
What did that mean? No one was quite sure, and when the then-president lost his re-election bid a few weeks later, it became a moot point.
Four years later, however, the Republican returns to the White House and is confronted with the issue again. Welker even reminded Trump of their debate during his last “Meet the Press” appearance, noting that the federal minimum wage has been $7.25 for more than fifteen years and asking again if he is willing to increase it.
“It’s a very low number,” the new president admitted, referring to the status quo. “I agree, it is a very low number.” After some back-and-forth on the issue — he claimed that restaurants in California are “going out of business everywhere” due to a wage increase — the host asked, “Is this something you’re going to look into?” Trump replied:
I would consider it. I’d like to speak to the governors. And the other thing that’s really complicated about the minimum wage is that the places are so different. Mississippi and Alabama and great places are very different than New York or California, I mean in terms of the cost of living and other things. So it would be nice to just have a minimum wage for the entire country, but that wouldn’t work because you have places where it’s very cheap to live, where maybe an $8 or $9 minimum wage could be. have very little effect because the cost of living is very low in certain places.
For the most part, this is a well-known statement from Republican officials who oppose minimum wage increases, but what stood out to me was a point the President-elect made in passing:[I]It would be nice to just have a minimum wage for the entire country, but that wouldn’t work.”
That is not an argument against increase the minimum wage; that’s an argument against to have a minimum wage.
In other words, Trump believes, based on his on-air comments, that the federal minimum wage law, which was created by FDR and Democrats in Congress nearly nine decades ago, should not exist at all.
That might have generated more public interest, were it not for the fact that Trump’s position on the minimum wage has been so erratic for so long that there is no reason to believe his views won’t change again soon.
For example, let’s not forget that candidate Trump opposed a wage increase during the 2016 Republican Party presidential elections, complaining that American wages were already too high. After winning his party’s nomination, he changed his mind, denouncing the status quo and boasting that his willingness to accept a pay raise showed he was “very different from most Republicans.”
In a Fox News interview in July 2016, Trump stated, “I’m the only Republican who said we need to go above and beyond the minimum wage in some cases.” He pressed a specific number and replied: “I’d say €10”, an increase of €7.25.
The rhetoric, however, has always come with fine print: Trump wanted to be seen as taking the people’s stand, but he also made it clear that he expected states to do the work.
As president, Trump continued to play rhetorical games along these lines. In July 2020, the president said during a Fox Business Network interview: “I’m going to make a statement on the minimum wage. I think differently than a lot of minimum wage people, some people in my own party. But I will make a statement on the minimum wage in the next two weeks.”
That was 232 weeks ago. We are still waiting for that ‘explanation’.
Where are we staying? I suppose it’s possible that the incoming president — the one who acknowledged the obvious fact that $7.25 an hour is “a very low number” — will take action on the issue he raised during his first term ignored. But given his apparent hostility towards the exist of a federal minimum wage, I would recommend keeping expectations low.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
