So farmers and hotel companies are having trouble finding replacement for immigrants who, fearing for their safety, are leaving these jobs because they are vulnerable targets for ICE raids. Trump, being a hotelier and dependent on this same immigrant labor force, is now being forced to choose between cheap labor or cracking down on illegal immigration.

The whole point of Trump and the Republican’s campaign against illegal of immigrants, as Matt Walsh points out, is Americans now will take these jobs at a higher and more livable wage. Labor will become more dear and thus business will have to pay higher wages in order to fill those jobs.

And it was not some unintended consequence of their actions. Trump and his cronies said as much in their campaign. Immigrants are taking jobs from Americans. Get rid of the illegal immigrant and the Americans would take the jobs. The problem these economic wizards didn’t count on is that Americans would refuse to do these jobs at the immigrant low wage.

You can have low pay jobs with immigrant labor (more workers) or higher paying jobs with American labor (less workers) but you can’t have low wages with just American labor. It is all down to supply and demand.

Trump, being a Wharton School of Economics graduate, should know this. That he continues to have problems with understanding basic Capitalist theory is trouble particularly since he sees Capitalism as the solution to USA’s economic woes. He was wrong about tariffs and he is wrong about immigrant labor. He also gives an inordinate value to bullying people as a method of negotiating.

Adam Smith, Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand would be appalled.