Ramstad: Readers sound off on Target, Trump and DEI

More readers sent me e-mail after my column three weeks ago about Target changing its DEI policies than any since I started as a columnist in 2023.

One reader called me the “conservative voice of the Star Tribune,” while another called me a “Never Trumper.” That could mean that readers don’t understand me, but I prefer to think my ideas don’t fit in a neat political box.

In recent weeks, I also heard a lot from readers about a column on donor-advised funds and one at the start of the year about population leveling and decline, a preoccupation of mine.

It was the DEI feedback that most closely tracked the national conversation over the first month of President Donald Trump’s second term. So far, he has shown the economy and the arrest of inflation aren’t at the top of his to-do list.

The bull case on Trump’s approach to the economy is that Elon Musk’s efficiency squad will slow the growth of federal spending and reverse the crowding-out effect it has had on private sector growth.

The bear case is Musk will damage parts of government that work well and federal job cuts will lead to recession. Another risk is that Trump’s tax plans will increase government debt, leading to higher interest rates and slower overall economic growth.

Mostly, Trump has focused on the culture war, where he portrays certain Americans as victims of others. While divide and conquer may work as political strategy, it is a terrible economic one.

Trump sees DEI — the acronym for “diversity, equity and inclusion” efforts — as discriminatory rather than helping people who have been on the sidelines and who now provide the marginal growth needed by businesses and the broader economy.

He is erasing DEI policies from federal agencies and using legal and financial threats to force businesses and other institutions to do the same. Target announced at the end of Trump’s first week in office that its DEI program would morph, and the headline on my column asked whether the company could be blamed in the face of Trump’s threats.

Most of the e-mail I got was from readers who did blame Target. Ryan, a 62-year-old veteran in Fargo who asked me not to use his last name, wrote that he will boycott Target.

“This move by Target simply confirmed their lip service to diversity and inclusion; their own press release is a damning indictment of greed and corporate cowardice,” he wrote.

Another reader, Bob Beutel, a retired attorney in St. Paul, put his finger on the problem in the fairness argument Trump and others wield in their criticism of DEI, affirmative action and similar initiatives.

“As for being ‘fair’ to white males, the white males got and maintain a head start in the business race. Is it ‘fair’ to tell others that they have a different, later starting gun? Is it fair to make them run two or three laps behind privileged white males forever?” Beutel wrote.

Side note: Trump is doing the same thing with trade policy. His announcement last week of reciprocal trade barriers locks into place the advantage the U.S. has over smaller and poorer countries.

However, Trump can’t fight the demographic forces that are leading to greater diversity in the U.S. and he can’t stop less-wealthy nations from climbing the economic ladder. Eventually, the people Trump thinks he’s helping by holding other people back will also be hurt.

Separately, while reporting my Jan. 25 column about donor-advised funds (DAFs), I gleaned from the unwillingness of nonprofit leaders to speak openly that I was broaching a sensitive topic. The reader reaction showed me why.

Several readers who use DAFs to manage their charitable giving criticized my criticism of people who focus more on growing their DAFs than distributing from them.

In a letter to the editor, Norm Rickeman of Woodland, a former board chairman at the Minneapolis Foundation and user of DAFs for more than 20 years, said he and his wife have donated more money by using a DAF than they would have without it.

He uses a DAF well, however. The problem that nonprofit leaders see, and that seems apparent to me from the overall data on DAF distributions, is that too many people leave money in DAFs for too long. The effect is their capital is used on Wall Street instead of Main Street.

On Jan. 1, I marked the two-year anniversary of column-writing by interviewing Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute about his recent article on depopulation. Since then, the consulting firm McKinsey published a report on depopulation that soberly concluded advanced countries won’t be able to support existing income and retirement norms in the future without substantial gains in productivity, longer workdays or more years in the workforce.

After my column appeared, reader John Primus of Edina suggested one idea for relieving Minnesota’s labor shortage would be for employers to bring back retirees on a part-time basis.

“In my case I have over 50 years in an industry but am not able to find any opportunity to continue on a less than full-time commitment. Many of my friends agree. Waste of much needed talent,” he wrote.