Donald Trump's deportation plan could shrink economy by 2 percent, study finds

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published 5 May 2016

If Donald Trump were to follow through with his plan to deport America's 11 million undocumented immigrants, the economy would suffer a devastating blow, according to a new study from the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank. The study finds that Trump's deportation plan would remove about 6.8 million workers from the U.S. economy, in turn causing a slump in private sector output anywhere from $381.5 billion to $623.2 billion. The economy would shrink by about 2 percent.

Problems would likely extend beyond the initial slump, too. The study contends that many of the jobs left vacant by the mass deportation would go unfilled because there wouldn't be enough legal workers willing to do them. That would leave potentially millions of vacancies in industries including farming, construction, and hospitality, which employ the highest share of undocumented immigrants.

"The things Donald Trump has said are utterly unworkable," American Action Forum President Douglas Holtz-Eakin said.