Krugman: Trump immigration crackdown ‘set to hobble food production and home construction’

Economist Paul Krugman said he believes President Trump’s immigration crackdown will “hobble” the country’s food production and home construction.

In a post on his Substack, Krugman said he’s spent a lot of time reviewing Trump’s mass deportation plan and his tariff proposal.

He wrote that “blocking imports of foreign-made goods and deporting foreign-born workers are, in some ways, similar in their economic implications.”

“But tariffs are about dollars and cents; a crackdown on immigrants is about people,” Krugman wrote. “And because it’s about people, Trump’s hostility to immigrants is likely to do far more damage, humanitarian and even economic, than his trade policy.”

Krugman said he hopes he is wrong but believes people will start turning on one another out of fear in a way that he described as “ugly and scary.” The mass deportation plan that is already underway has “unleashed forces of hatred” that Trump can’t rein back in, he wrote.

He noted that it’s believed immigrants lacking permanent legal status make up around 5 percent of the country’s workforce.

The agriculture industry might be hit the hardest, he suggested, noting that many farm laborers lack permanent legal status.

“Push those workers out, either by actual deportation or detention or simply by creating a climate of fear, and just watch what happens to grocery prices,” he wrote.

He also noted that about a quarter of construction industry employees are migrants. With those employees out of the picture, homebuilding will become more expensive, Krugman argued.

“So at a time when Americans are still angry about the price of groceries and, with more justification, about the unaffordability of housing, Trump’s immigrant crackdown seems set to hobble food production and home construction,” Krugman wrote.

The Hill has reached out to the Trump administration for comment.