President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign promise of sweeping deportations could result in “severe economic fallout,” devastating the economy even more than the Great Recession, according to a report by Democrats in the Congressional Joint Economic Committee.
Although Trump’s messaging about improving the economy for Americans during his second term appeared to strike a chord with voters, another one of his campaign fixtures — mass deportations — could have harmful economic consequences, the December 11 report warns. The 78-year-old Republican has suggested that would use the military to assist in mass deportations.
Not only would the move upend the lives of millions of migrants, but Trump’s plans for mass deportations could “reduce economic growth, shrink the labor force, cost U.S.-born workers their jobs, raise costs for nearly all Americans, and risk igniting inflation,” states the report, which relied on research by nonprofit organizations.
The American Immigration Council estimated that if the U.S. deported one million people each year until the country no longer had an undocumented population, it could lead to a 4.2 percent to 6.8 percent loss in GDP. “To put this in context, the economy shrank by 4.3 percent during the Great Recession,” the Democrats wrote.
The Great Recession ran from 2007 to 2009 and was spurred by the bursting housing bubble.
Estimates from the Peterson Institute for International Economics showed even grimmer economic consequences. After analyzing how the deportation of 8.3 million undocumented immigrants would impact the U.S. economy, the think tank found that the GDP would be 7.4 percent lower by 2028.
“This 7.4 percent reduction in GDP over four years would likely mean that the U.S. economy would not grow at all during President Trump’s second term,” the report says.
Employment would also be 7 percent lower by the end of Trump’s term, the institute found, and 44,000 U.S.-born workers would lose their jobs.
“Employers would not simply hire U.S.-born workers to fill the vacancies created by undocumented workers who are deported, as there would be too many vacancies, U.S.-born workers would be unlikely to move into these industries, and employer hiring behavior can be variable,” the report says.
Although undocumented immigrants only make up about 4.4 percent and 5.4 percent of the overall labor force, they have enormous roles in certain industries: construction, agriculture, health care and hospitality.
Trump’s proposed mass deportations would remove up to 1.5 million workers from the construction industry, 225,000 from agriculture, one million from hospitality, 870,000 from manufacturing and 461,000 from transportation and warehousing, AIC estimated.
These labor shortages could also lead to increased costs across the board. Deporting 1.3 million immigrants would raise prices by 1.5 percent by 2028, while deporting 8.3 million immigrants would raise prices by 9.1 percent, the intsitute predicted.
By taking undocumented immigrants out of the equation, the U.S. is also losing a group of consumers, leading to reduced spending, the report says.
Given the estimated economic ramifications, Congressional Joint Economic Committee Chair Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) called Trump’s plan for mass deportations “reckless.”
“Trump’s plan to deport millions of immigrants does absolutely nothing to address the core problems driving our broken immigration system,” the New Mexico Democrat said. “Instead, all it will do is raise grocery prices, destroy jobs, and shrink the economy. His immigration policy is reckless and would cause irreparable harm to our economy.”
