Trump’s speech makes it seem as if globalization alone suppressed wages and it was done by elite Democrats. Missing from his tale is the role of the corporate community in pushing this agenda and his GOP allies in implementing it. NAFTA never would have passed without GOP votes, as two-thirds of the House Democrats opposed it!

What’s missing from this discussion is all the ways that the business community has used its power to suppress wages over the last four decades. Start with excessive unemployment due to Federal Reserve Board policies that were antagonistic to wage growth and friendly to the finance sector and bondholders. Add in government austerity at the Federal and state levels (mostly GOP governors and legislatures) that has impeded this recovery. Then there’s the decimation of collective bargaining, which is the largest reason for middle class wages to falter.

Also forgotten is the erosion of the minimum wage, which is now more than 25 percent below its 1968 level though productivity has more than doubled. Phasing in a $15 minimum wage would lift wages for at least a third of the workforce. Trump is AWOL or wrong on all these issues. The most current example is the GOP and business community effort to overturn the recent raising of the overtime threshold that would help more than 12 million salaried workers. Where’s Trump on that?