MAGA truly is the intersection of incompetence and idiocy…
The ITA is responsible for promoting American industries and exports abroad, which is something that Trump has staked out as a central pillar of his agenda.
However, DOGE fired probationary employees at the ITA last month, which in turn makes it much harder for the agency to execute its duties.
Probationary workers are those who have been either hired or promoted in the last year or two. Trump apologists have tried to paint such employees as disposable but if you were recently promoted it obviously means that you are valuable to the organization. Some of our best federal workers have been caught up in this net and terminated.
“The morale has hit a complete rock bottom,” one ITA employee told The Hill. “The way people have been fired, it’s just such an egregious act, and with zero [regard] for however long that person has worked there, or how they’ve contributed.”
“It almost seems like by cutting all these people, it’s in effect undermining the goals of the administration,” they said.
These firings directly contradict Trump’s stated goals and will likely exacerbate the trade deficits that he is constantly whining about.
“If President Trump genuinely cares about improving the trade balance, boosting US exports and restricting imports where it’s appropriate, the ITA plays a critical role in that,” said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“It would seem to me that a strong ITA fits very well with the way Trump has traditionally described the goals of his trade agenda,” he added.
“One of the big priorities of the administration is to make sure that U.S. companies are exporting, that there’s U.S. leadership in specific sectors,” one former ITA employee told The Hill.
“These are critical things that the administration wants to do,” they went on. “They want to establish leadership in certain industries, and proceeded to let go people that were directly implementing those policies and worked in those sectors and advocated for US industry.”
“It wasn’t like we were implementing things from the previous administration, like DEI, for example,” the individual added.
The Trump administration really is incapable of doing anything right. They undermine their own stated goals at every turn while simultaneously making everything worse for the rest of us.
Electing Donald Trump to a second term will go down as one of the biggest mistakes in American history.
