In the wake of his election, the bravado of Mr. Trump and his hard-right followers is boundless. Three examples are examined here.

First, Trump repeatedly says he will initiate “the largest deportation program in American history.”

Second, respecting climate change/global warming, he has historically been a denier. He plans to reverse efforts to mitigate these phenomena, characterizing them as a “green new scam”. His watchwords are “drill, baby, drill.” He has stated “Starting on Day 1, I will approve new (oil and gas) drilling, new pipelines, new refiners, new power plants, new reactors, and we will slash the red tape.”

Third, with respect to regulations generally, Trump has said “on Day 1, (I’ll) sign an executive order directing every federal agency to immediately remove every single burdensome regulation driving up the cost of goods.”

In short, bravado would have us believe that, upon taking office, Mr. Trump will commence massive immigrant deportations; ignore global warming and meet our energy needs by increasing fossil fuel use; and dismantle the nation’s legislatively fashioned regulatory construct by ignoring the fact that the dollar value of health and safety regulations often exceeds the dollar cost of these regulations.

Enter the real world: In the first two years of his administration, Trump will have a legislative majority in the House and the Senate. He may well, by executive order or new legislation, deport millions of undocumented immigrants, many of whom are engaged in the growing, harvesting and processing of a wide variety of America’s agricultural output. The hope that low-income unemployed (white) workers will replace deported immigrants in the fields, stockyards and meat-packing plants of the nation is wishful thinking. White workers largely abandoned these activities 50 or 100 years ago.

More realistically, supply and demand realities will kick in. The absence of the labor pool provided by undocumented immigrants means that crops in the ground will not be harvested. New plantings will be reduced. The numbers of cattle, hogs and poultry will drop sharply. The supply of a wide range of food products needed by American households will shrink precipitously – and the cost of what remains available will rise and remain high because replacing the deported labor pool will not be easy or quick. These inflationary pressures will be felt widely; they will last for a long time. In sum, bravado cannot ward off the inexorable laws of supply and demand.

In the same vein, Trump’s full-throated embrace of fossil fuels ignores the overwhelming conclusion of scientists in all corners of the world, i.e., these fuels exacerbate and hasten global warming. More egregiously, he ignores decades of observable data: increasing air and water temperatures, global melting of polar and glacial ice, the increased frequency and intensity of severe storms, increased rainfall amounts, and, sadly, the increased loss of life and dollar damage to public and private property that this warming gives rise to. Trump’s bravado does not temper these data realities – it exacerbates these problems. Mother Nature, then, (not Trump) will have the last word.

Finally, with respect to government regulations generally, Trump would roll them back if they increase the cost of end products. This approach is too myopic and too one-sided. It ignores the lessons of the environmental movement where, time and again, regulations were sustained when it was demonstrated that the dollar costs of pollution were greater than the costs of pollution control. This broader standard – i.e., determining whether the societal gain of regulation is greater than the corporate cost – is appropriate in any/all settings where regulations are sought to be imposed. Anything less (Trump’s bravado) is a windfall to corporate greed.

In each of the three examples of Trump bravado examined it seems clear that bravado is not enough – overarching supply/demand principles, Mother Nature’s dictates, benefit/cost principles will almost certainly prevail. In our quest “for a more perfect union,” the public interest is served by pointing these facts out.