[P]resident-elect Donald Trump’s words about U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders have been at times paradoxical, portraying the Vermonter as both a “maniac” and a “communist” as well as a prescient policy thinker.
Trump periodically attacked the democratic socialist throughout the campaign, saying he “made a deal with the devil” by endorsing Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
“Crazy Bernie, he’s crazy as a bed bug,” Trump told a Las Vegas crowd in June. “But, you know, he doesn’t quit.”
Indeed, Sanders aides say he won’t quit his push for progressive policies, even without the hoped-for Democratic Senate and a President Clinton. Although Sanders and Trump have some things in common, the question is whether the two — who have never spoken — will find any shared political ground.
Sanders, for his part, has accused Trump of peddling bigoted beliefs and has characterized many of his initial moves as president-elect as hypocritical.
Still, as candidates, both understood that anger was a driving force in 2016, and both accused the media and the political system of being “rigged” against them. They effectively portrayed themselves as political outsiders, and each sparked an intense following of supporters — many middle- and working-class white voters in rural areas with economic and cultural grievances.
As Trump gears up a victory tour, Sanders and his team are hammering out a game plan of their own, establishing the duties and travel schedule for his new Senate Democratic leadership role as outreach chair.
“Real change doesn’t take place on Capitol Hill,” Sanders said after he was elected to the newly created post. “It takes place in grassroots America.”
His Senate outreach role likely will include travel to the Rust Belt states that Clinton lost in November. (Sanders won a number of Midwestern states in the primaries, including Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Indiana.)
Sanders is also in the midst of a whirlwind book tour that is energizing liberal enclaves throughout the country.
Because the Republicans have a majority in the Senate, Sanders won’t be a committee chairman, and therefore won’t be able to hold hearings regarding his progressive causes.
But Sanders is preparing legislation aimed at keeping the president-elect’s campaign promises to working people, which included support for a higher minimum wage and more comprehensive social safety net programs.
And while Trump has moved right on some issues since the election, he remains a mercurial figure who some Democrats think can be swayed by polls and pressure.
“Mr. Trump, we have a list of everything you said, and we are going to hold you to account,” the Vermont senator said in a post-election speech at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
Here are the major policy areas where Sanders and his aides see openings to work with the new president:
Trade
Both Trump and Sanders are outspoken critics of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which removed tariffs and promoted trade among Canada, Mexico and the United States. (The two also railed against President Barack Obama’s proposed Trans Pacific Partnership, which is as good as dead with Republicans in control of Congress.)
“There’s one thing we’re very similar in: (Sanders) knows our country is being ripped off big league — big league — on trade,” Trump told MSNBC in February.
NAFTA, which went into effect in 1994, was an early signifier of a globalizing economy. Supporters of the deal say it has fostered broad economic benefits for the country, including the export of more American goods and the import of more affordable products.
Trump and Sanders, however, have pointed to the American industries where good-paying jobs evaporated as countries with fewer labor protections and lower labor costs took over production.
A good example is the American auto sector, which has lost 350,000 jobs since NAFTA — supported by Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton — was ratified. In that same period, Mexico’s auto employment numbers spiked from 120,000 to 550,000 workers, according to the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations.
NAFTA includes a provision allowing any country to pull out with six months’ notice.
Renegotiating the deal, however, would be more complicated. Any changes would require cooperation from both Canada and Mexico, as well as approval from Congress. Leaders from the Canadian and Mexican governments have recently expressed some willingness to discuss changes to the pact, though they have not endorsed any major overhaul to the agreement.
On the campaign trail, Trump called out specific companies that had announced plans to move jobs out of the country, including a Carrier plant in Indiana that makes healing and cooling units.
On Wednesday, Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence — who is Indiana’s governor — announced that Carrier would no longer be shipping 2,000 jobs to Mexico. While Carrier still plans to move some manufacturing to Mexico, Trump and Pence forged a deal to keep roughly 1,000 jobs in Indiana.
The deal with Carrier includes the promise of economic incentives from the state of Indiana, as well as a pledge by Trump to ease federal regulations and make the corporate tax code friendlier to big business, according to The New York Times.
Sanders publicly offered his own solutions for keeping jobs in America after Trump tweeted about keeping the Carrier plant, though the senator’s plan diverges sharply from the announced deal.
I am working hard, even on Thanksgiving, trying to get Carrier A.C. Company to stay in the U.S. (Indiana). MAKING PROGRESS – Will know soon!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2016
Sanders is drafting the Outsourcing Prevention Act, which aims to protect American jobs by imposing, among other things, a tax on companies that ship production plants overseas.
Sanders pointed out in a news release Saturday that Carrier’s parent company — United Technologies — has billions in federal contracts, and he said his legislation would also prohibit companies that outsource jobs from receiving federal contracts, grants or loans.
After Trump announced his Carrier deal, Sanders wrote a blistering piece in the [Washington Post,] claiming that Trump’s tactic of tax breaks would incentivize other major corporations to threaten outsourcing in hopes of gaining government favors.
“Instead of a damn tax, the company will be rewarded with a damn tax cut,” Sanders wrote. “Wow! How’s that for standing up to corporate greed? How’s that for punishing corporations that shut down in the United States and move abroad?”
Infrastructure
The first policy proposal on Sanders’ recently released “Agenda For America” calls for a $1 trillion infrastructure program that would create 13 million jobs.
Trump, similarly, made improving the nation’s infrastructure a top priority throughout his presidential bid.
“We have infrastructure that we have to fix. We have bridges and roads and tunnels, and everything’s falling apart,” Trump told reporters in September.
However, Trump’s and Sanders’ policy prescriptions do not entirely match up.
Trump’s infrastructure proposal involves $137 billion in tax credits for private companies to invest in projects, a move Sanders recently called a “scam” and a form of corporate welfare.
Sanders’ infrastructure proposal, called the Rebuild America Act, would invest directly in projects, including roads and bridges, a high-speed rail system, increased broadband service and improvements to national parks.
Sanders’ bill would create a National Infrastructure Bank, an institution overseen by the government that would loan public money to private companies for big public works projects. A bipartisan board of governors would approve the federal loans and conduct oversight.
Other aspects of Trump’s infrastructure plan — including rolling back building regulations — go against Sanders’ ideology. But while Trump derided a National Infrastructure Bank during the campaign, advisers say he is now open to such a proposal.
Banking Regulations
Trump portrayed bankers as an enemy throughout the presidential campaign, and he tweeted in July that Hillary Clinton “will never reform Wall Street. She is owned by Wall Street.”
In spite of this Sanders-sounding rhetoric, Trump has promised to repeal the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, which restricted risky banking activity, including predatory mortgage lending that spurred the financial collapse in 2008. The law also allows banks to be broken up if they are deemed “too big to fail.”
Since Trump won, U.S. bank stocks have shot up 14 percent amid hopes that Dodd-Frank regulations will be rolled back.
Former Goldman Sachs banker [Steven Mnuchin], whom Trump recently picked for Treasury secretary, told the Wall Street Journal] on Wednesday that his top priority is to “strip back parts of Dodd-Frank.”
Mnuchin’s main target is the so-called Volcker Rule, which limits some potentially risky speculative investments by banks. Risky hedge fund investments like those limited by the Volcker Rule were another contributor to the financial crash.
Sanders and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., issued a joint statement Wednesday asserting that the choice of Mnuchin “makes clear that Donald Trump wants to cater to the same Wall Street executives that have hurt working families again and again.”
Sanders called for a tax on Wall Street speculation during the campaign and an end to big bonuses for banking executives. He has also introduced the Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist Act, which would deprive the largest banks of loans and credit insurance from the Federal Reserve and instruct the Treasury secretary to begin breaking up the largest financial institutions.
He and Trump have one area of apparent agreement on Wall Street regulations.
In October, Trump voiced support for reinstating the Glass-Steagall law, which expired in 1999 and separated commercial and investment banking. Sanders has also called for a modern iteration of Glass-Steagall and would likely be a top Senate ally in pushing such legislation through.
Entitlement Programs
Sanders’ Senate office posted a video Wednesday on YouTube of Trump promising on the campaign trail not to touch Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits.
“It’s not fair to the people who have been paying in for years and now all of a sudden they want to cut,” Trump said.
However, his nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services, Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., has advocated deep cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. Price is also a fierce advocate of repealing all parts of the Affordable Care Act, including the popular requirement that insurance companies not turn away patients with pre-existing medical conditions.
“What hypocrisy!” Sanders said in a statement Wednesday reacting to Price’s nomination. “Mr. Trump needs to tell the American people that what he said during the campaign were just lies, or else appoint an HHS secretary who will protect these programs and do what Trump said he would do.”
Sanders appears ready to fight back for the next four years with his characteristic vigor.
“Will he do it? Who knows,” Sanders recently told PBS. “But we are going to — we have a list of everything that he said. And we are going to bring forth legislation around those issues and say, ‘Mr. Trump, this is what you promised the American people. Keep your word.’”
