US News & World Report: Trump's Economic Hustle

In the latest attempt to initiate his campaign's long-promised "pivot" to the general election, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump delivered an address before the Detroit Economic Club on Monday that was equal parts conservative pablum, distortion and conspiracy theorizing. But hey, at least he didn't insult a new ethnic group, so I imagine some folks are going to score it as a very presidential moment for him.
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The policy content of the telepromptered speech was warmed-over Republican orthodoxy: tax cuts, deregulation and an insistence that any effort to combat climate change be subverted. Yes, Trump harped on his anti-trade message that doesn't fit with whatever's left of today's GOP – and threw in a line on a child care tax deduction that actually won't help many of the people who need it most – but otherwise there was surely enough standard-issue GOP fare here to warm the cockles of House Speaker Paul Ryan's heart.

He layered on top of that some of his favorite lies: That Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton called for raising taxes on the middle class (she didn't); that regulation is costing the economy $2 trillion per year (it's not); and that Obamacare will kill some 2 million jobs if it remains the law of the land (it won't). And then he threw in some conspiracy fearmongering about the official Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs numbers, one of his favorite ridiculous theories.
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Donald Trump's big economic policy speech was no pivot, just pre-prepared fabrications and conspiracies.

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-08-08/donald-trumps-detroit-economic-club-speech-is-no-presidential-pivot