Donald Trump is giving Mitt Romney a run for his money in the flip flopping department. Even his closest advisers are confused by the speed at which Trump changes his mind.
This week, Trump said the government should raise the federal minimum wage by roughly one-third, calling for a legal standard of $10 per hour. The federal minimum is currently $7.25 per hour.
The Republican presidential nominee has made a series of contradictory comments during his campaign, at times indicating wages are already too high and at other times suggesting a boost is in order.
At the Democratic National Convention this week in Philadelphia, Trump was hammered repeatedly by Democratic speakers for suggesting the minimum wage should be dropped.
But now that Trump is recommending a specific wage hike, it’s the right’s turn to gripe.
Trump’s latest position puts him at odds with conservative thinkers and most of the business community, which argues that a government-mandated wage hike would just mean fewer workers as businesses cut costs to meet the new requirement.
Even Trump’s own economic brain trust could not explain how the GOP nominee decided $10 per hour should be the new standard.
“I saw the statement that he made on TV, but I haven’t had the chance to talk to him in the last couple weeks about this,” Stephen Moore, an economist at the Heritage Foundation who is advising the Trump campaign on economic issues, told The Hill on Wednesday.
“I don’t know exactly what he was endorsing. The $10 minimum wage, that was the first I’d heard of that.”
