Californians gave Donald Trump a stern rebuke Tuesday, handing Hillary Clinton a victory so lopsided that she ended up winning the nationwide popular vote.
Now the multibillion-dollar question is: What does the president-elect have in store for California?
As some disheartened California Democrats launched an online movement to secede from the United States, policy experts tried to gauge what to expect from a president-elect who thinks global warming is a hoax, free trade is a job killer and the Affordable Care Act must be repealed.
That’s not easy given Trump’s penchant for contradicting himself and keeping policy details to a bare minimum. And, of course, this has not been a good year for prognosticators.
Still, Trump could force hard changes on the state, analysts say, especially with Republicans controlling both houses of Congress. He could wreak havoc on the state’s budget by cutting federal subsidies to needy residents, launch trade wars that could decimate Silicon Valley’s supply chain and divert federal funds away from transit projects like the BART extension to downtown San Jose.
He also could try to throw roadblocks at California’s latest efforts to cut down on greenhouse gases and move to deport the state’s estimated 3 million illegal immigrants. To his supporters, all of these might be needed changes, but they would be wrenching.
At a news conference in San Jose on Wednesday, many Latino immigrants openly wept. One woman said she feared her parents — who have lived in this country illegally for 22 years — would be deported. A young boy cried with his mother as the pair discussed Trump’s win.
“On balance it’s hard to see how this is not going to hurt California,” said Henry Brady, dean of UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. “He is going to be concerned about states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio. We are not a concern of his.”
Vanessa Williamson, a fellow with the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution, said Trump might struggle to get some of his campaign pledges, such as a major infrastructure bill, through a Congress filled with deficit hawks. But, she said, GOP lawmakers will likely be in lockstep when it comes to trillions of dollars in tax cuts that will mostly help the rich as well as the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare.
That would not only jeopardize the health coverage of most of the 1.4 million Californians who receive subsidized insurance plans. It could also blow a multibillion-dollar hole in California’s budget.
Here’s why: California was one of the first states to expand Medicaid (called Medi-Cal in California) to low-income adults without children, a provision allowed under Obamacare. About 3.8 million low-income Californians have enrolled in the expanded program, with the feds now picking up the tab to the tune of $15 billion a year.
Larry Levitt, a vice president at the Menlo Park-based Kaiser Family Foundation, said if Obamacare is repealed, the health coverage of more than 5 million Californians now insured through Medi-Cal and Covered California, the state’s health care exchange, “could all be at risk.’’
“California’s success is dependent on the availability of federal funding,” Levitt said. “It’s hard to imagine the state being able to replace those funds.” Instead it would face ratcheting back care to previous levels — which may seem appropriate to those who think the country can’t afford Obamacare, but not to those who consider health care a right.
But Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Dublin, said Trump could face some resistance in his own party on doing away with Obamacare, especially from Republican congressmen in swing districts.
“I think it would be very dangerous for any of them going into 2018 to say they repealed the Affordable Care Act and did nothing to replace it,” Swalwell said.
As the nation veered rightward Tuesday, California continued its leftward drift, legalizing marijuana and passing new gun control restrictions. And votes are still being counted in legislative races that could once again give Democrats a two-thirds majority in both houses — allowing them to pass taxes without a single Republican vote.
Yet, as much as California has gotten used to going its own way, especially when it comes to addressing climate change, there is no guarantee that a Trump administration will be so obliging.
“There is one vision of the future where we no longer have federal support but are free to do our own thing to create a clean energy economy,” said Michael Wara, a Stanford Law School professor and fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute. “But there is another possibility where the federal government comes in and says there will be only one policy.” Trump has talked of respecting states’ rights, but it is not clear where he would draw the line.
Even if the Republicans don’t try to rewrite federal laws to rein in California’s environmental regulations, Wara said, they could hurt its burgeoning green industry by eliminating tax breaks for the industry or starting trade disputes with China and other East Asian nations that produce ever-cheaper solar cells and batteries that have driven industry growth.
Silicon Valley firms would be “naïve” to assume that Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress will be on what they might consider the wrong side of every issue, said Garrett Johnson, co-founder of Lincoln Labs, a San Francisco-based think tank for technology workers who support less government regulation.
Still, he said, the valley doesn’t know where Trump and the GOP stand on important matters such as factory automation. “Trump made clear that he will be bringing manufacturing jobs back, but if that happens you’ll have machines performing the jobs done by workers now, so what would that look like?” he asked.
Carl Guardino, CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, said the tech industry was ready to build bridges with Trump and make its case for the important role global trade plays in the American economy. One reason for optimism, he said, is Trump’s call for a trillion dollars in new infrastructure spending.
But Stuart Cohen, executive director of the Oakland-based transit advocacy nonprofit Transform, questioned whether fiscal conservatives in the House would back such a plan, which would further explode the nation’s budget deficit if taxes aren’t raised. And even if Trump can wrangle the money, Cohen said, the Republicans would likely focus spending on highways and roads rather than mass transit projects such as high-speed rail and the BART extension to downtown San Jose.
Cohen, however, acknowledged that it’s anybody’s guess what will happen under President Trump. “That is what you get when you elect someone without a platform,” he said.
Staff writers Tracy Seipel and Tatiana Sanchez contributed to this report.
