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Donald Trump: Wages Are 'Too High'

November 11, 2015

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump remarked that wages in the United States were "too high" at the beginning of Tuesday night's GOP debate in Milwaukee.

Trump was asked by Fox Business host Neil Cavuto whether he would be sympathetic to calls for a $15/hour minimum wage, to which he responded no, also taking time to tout his "tremendous" tax plan.

"We are a country that is being beaten on every front, economically, militarily," Trump said. "There is nothing that we do now to win. We don't win anymore ... Taxes too high, wages too high. We're not going to be able to compete against the world. I hate to say it, but we have to leave it the way it is. People have to go out. They have to work really hard, and they have to get into that upper stratum. But we cannot do this if we are going to compete against the rest of the world. We just can't do it."

"So do not raise the minimum wage?" Cavuto asked.

"I would not raise the minimum," Trump said.

Given the flatness of wages in the U.S., Trump likely misspoke when he said wages were "too high." A Sept. 21 report at CNN discussed how middle-class incomes have stagnated, and wages have failed to rise despite the drop in the unemployment rate to around 5 percent.

It was one of several slip-ups for Trump on the debate stage Tuesday, as he also falsely stated China was part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and drew some jeers for telling Carly Fiorina she interrupted too much.