Only In Marin
The business of elections By Bill Meagher
L ong time readers of this column, and you five know who you are, know I think very little of former president Donald Trump. And while there are hundreds of good reasons to think of old 45 as a loser, I didn’t care for him before he was elected. So, I’m being upfront about it as this column will look at possible business impacts of the presidential election, which at this writing is only weeks away. As a reporter, I wrote about Trump’s shortcomings as a businessman before
meaningful way. She maintains the federal government can offer tax incentives to builders willing to construct lower-priced starter homes and she wants to double the budget for businesses building affordable rental properties. She also wants to expand a program where the feds could help first-time home buyers with a down payment assist of $25,000. Harris also said it’s high time to make the review and
permitting processes for housing faster so product hits the market faster and costs are better contained. This idea will find favor in Marin, which has long been demonized as a place where project plans don’t grow whiskers, they grow beards like ZZ Top. She plans to cut prescription drugs costs and to work to contain healthcare costs. Her campaign has hammered away at insulin costs. While Trump talked about reducing drug costs, and signed a bill to decrease costs, those programs were blocked by the courts. Both Harris and Trump have advocated reducing taxes on tipped income for service industry employees, good news for Marin’s restaurant and hospitality workers. And Trump complained Harris coopted his idea. Which brings us back to the world’s largest victim. That sounds like a crack about Trump’s weight. It’s not, it’s about his bellyaching. Which could also be a crack about his weight. Your Marin Moment Stop me if you have heard this one before. BioMarin has laid off staffers. The San Rafael-based biotech company focused on producing medications to treat orphan diseases, has done a second round of layoffs. The first round, which took place in May, put 170 employees on the street. The latest pink slip parade was announced in August and will cost 225 staffers their jobs. “BioMarin is in the process of developing a new corporate strategy and a critical component of delivering on this strategy is to ensure that BioMarin is structured in a way that will position the company for continued success in the future.” Translation? The company is in a tug of war between Wall Street, management and investors over future drug direction, costs and profit margins. g
the country lost its collective mind and elected him president. This is a guy who bankrupted six businesses in the hotel and casino sectors. This really does take some doing as everybody knows games of chance favor the house, most folks lose, and yet people show up with fistfuls of cash every day. Lest you think he was just unlucky in the hospitality/gaming/unlucky sector, let’s explore other business ventures with his name on them. There was Trump Airlines that crashed after two years. Trump Beverages died of thirst. The Trump Game went belly up after Hasbro and Milton Bradley couldn’t sell it. Trump magazine never found its readers. Trump Mortgage went bust. Trump Steaks died hungry. Trump Vodka died drunk. Trump University flunked out. For a stable genius, that’s a lot of instability. But to be fair those failures took place while he was just a millionaire with other people’s money in his pocket. What about how the Trump presidency performed for the economy? The economy drifted as COVID hit and Trump moved at a glacial pace to sideline the disease, with job losses mounting. He did engineer tax cuts that benefited the rich and left the middle-class shifting budgets and wondering what happened. The Trump administration also favored attaching tariffs to imported goods from China, Mexico and Canada which impacted companies bringing in goods from abroad as well as raising prices on products using imported materials. The tariffs reduced real income on a national basis as well as hindering Gross National Product. Let’s turn our attention to the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris. The former prosecutor has said she wants to drop food prices that have soared from, take your pick, inflation or price gauging. This sounds pretty good, but it remains unclear how she will do that. Grocery stores have notoriously slim margins, so knocking prices down would have to happen at the companies producing and selling the products to stores, a more complex issue. Harris also wants to see more housing production in an effort to change supply and demand relationships and dropping housing costs in a
Bill Meagher is a contributing editor for NorthBay biz magazine. He is also a senior reporter for The Deal, a Manhattan-based digital financial news outlet. His take on wine and baseball is available elsewhere in this month’s issue.
October 2024
NorthBaybiz 23
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