Donald Trump, economic genius:
Trump: A tariff is a tax on a foreign country. A lot of people like to say it’s a tax on us. No… It’s is a tax that doesn’t affect our country. pic.twitter.com/NNyNthZbKg
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 17, 2024
This brings up the eternal question: Is he lying or is he really so stupid he believes this? I mean, who does he think collects tariffs?¹ From whom?² Does he think we send the bill to Xi Jinping, who then sends us a check?³
This is not one of those things where liberal and conservative economists disagree. It's just a boring bit of accounting. But I suspect Trump simply doesn't know this and no one has the courage to tell him. It's startling to say this is the least of his problems, but it's true: He's a moron. And it's the least of his problems.
¹Answer: Customs and Border Protection.
²Answer: Whoever is importing the goods. Eventually, consumers pay most or all of it in the form of higher prices.
³No, that's not how it works.
I tell you what, Kevin, I *could* sit down and try to puzzle over what kind of insane word-association malapropisms led our stable genius to come up with this notion. It could even be something as inanely simple as deducing that people who ask for "asylum" in this country have to have been kicked out of insane asylums where they came from, who knows. Something he vaguely remembers from his freshman year, inbreeding with something Navarro once shouted at him, something like that? But you know, my toenails keep on growing and those suckers won't cut themselves.
PS: he really is an irremediable moron.
Why not both?
https://youtu.be/jFmkhLzTAPc
Correct answer
Exactly! And then there are times he repeats idiotic statements so often that he starts believing what he is saying.
When he not only kept saying he'd raise tariffs as if that would help Americans, but threatened a 600% higher rate on something, it amazed me that i saw so little push back or fact-checking, but maybe I missed some.
instead of tariffs on washing machines maybe we could have a 100% tax on the sale of stock in pump and dump SPAC social media companies
ot...
i see scotus is worried that their power grab isn't playing well with their subjugants so they're sending gorsuch out for a PR tour claiming that there are too many regulations
of course he never comes to the conclusion that women's reproductive organs might also fall beyond the purview of these regulations
so fuck gorsuch and the unregulated maga horse he rode in on
"Subjugants"-- good one.
And great choice of messenger there-- on a good day Gorsuch's favorables minus unfavorables might approach Vance's, and putting him out there more won't help that. "Gorsuch good-will tour" is not a word sequence to be found in natural language.
Then again, who else they got? Alito just showing up would panic the children and horses (and drive away the crows and gulls when he started talking), Kavanaugh would trigger the wimmen-folk and anyone else who couldn't stand high-school jocks, and Thomas won't do anything his patron doesn't pay him for.
That leaves Barrett and "balls and strikes" Roberts to sell the rubes on New Gilead and new law conjured up out of whole cloth. Beneath the Chief's pay grade, and a heavy lift for the newbie who's showing signs of going squishy on the project.
They'd do better selling New Coke.
It’s always been both.
Silly.
Tariffs are paid by Americans in the form of higher prices, to Americans. Mostly to Americans who are rich friends of Trump, I imagine.
Tariffs are paid to the government.
You seem to have a Trump-esque understanding of economics. Sad!
Who do you think the Customs agents who actually collect tariffs (I prefer the term "customs duties"; "tariff" has too many different meanings) work for?
Best argument to shame all of those fanatics & religious hypocrites.
It is pretty infantile to think that Trump is a moron.
He just doesn't about the truth, facts, and making sense. He cares only about getting what he wants, and says anything that he feels is useful in this respect.
Sad to say, I think a big part of his appeal is to people who are just as ignorant as he is. The fact that even an intellectually lazy no-nothing like Trump can be elected president validates their own intellectual laziness.
Don’t know. He’s a damn fool so… hard to say. His supporters are idiots and jackasses. Not sure it matters. Someone tried to kill him recently and I’m just sad they missed. Bless Thomas Crooks. He deserves that congressional Medal of Honor.
Tariffs make Chinese crap more expensive. Don’t buy it. That’s the point.
Tariffs also make American crap more expensive. When imports are more expensive, domestic producers jack up their prices. Capitalism 101.
No he is not a moron, he is a fucking moron (as per Rex Tillerson).
He is a pathological liar, a sociopath, and fucking moron. He is also delusional, and probably believes some of the lies he tells, or thinks his audience is even dumber than him (likely true), and will believe all the bull shit he slings.
Remember this:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/13/politics/trump-north-korea-nuclear-threat/index.html
I can't think of a more delusional statement by Il Duce (though I am sure its out there).
He got played by a far superior opponent. Unfortunately he's too vain and stupid to realize it.
I think he suffers from having had Peter Navarro as his trade advisor.
Navarro saw VAT -- which most of our economic peers derive probably most of their tax revenue from -- with an exemption for exports as a tariff, and based his academic career on the notion that this creates an advantage for VAT-protected producers in international trade.
It doesn't.
Essentially, a tariff -- or a VAT with an export exemption -- creates a pricing bubble for the economy imposing it, making everything affected inside the bubble more expensive, which effectively acts as an export tax on the same goods and anything that relies upon them as inputs to production. This effect is known as Lerner Symmetry.
I’m still looking for the “all of the above” check box…
He is lying, if not to Americans, then to himself. That's all there is to it.
If he's opening his mouth or typing with his fingers, he's lying to someone. It doesn't matter who he's lying to, except to recognize that he's always lying.
I expect someone like Navarro or Lighthizer told him foreign firms would reduce prices to compensate for the cost of the tariff rather than see it passed on and hurt their competitive position. That's probably what happened with some of the punitive tariffs which were expected to be temporary, and some Chinese companies may indeed have done it if they were very profitable beforehand.
However his fatuous claim completely destroys his argument that tariffs will bring jobs back to America. I mean if China is paying them, why would American manufacturers want to shut down their Chinese operations and transfer them to higher-cost USA?
The real question is, why can he say all the various kinds of things he says - intentionally false, accidentally false, delusional, gibberish - without it ever becoming something major media pundits consider potentially disqualifying him for office? Literally no one else in the public eye near his level could get away with it.
The question *why* he says things isn't interesting any more, if it ever really was. The question why he, and no one else, can say literally anything without any accountability in the major media is the interesting one.
I think most pundits condemned him as unfit for office a long time ago. But he's still a contender, and I don't suppose they can keep writing the same thing day after day if they want to attract an audience.
The media scandal is not the pundits so much as the straight "news" journalists and editors who continue to report his words and deeds without noting what an imbecile they make him, because they're terrified of being called "biased". For example Trump's Bedminster "press conference" the other day was an absolute sham, as Kevin described in another post, and that should have been the headline story: that Trump is so panicky he's stacking "press conferences" with tame Fox lackeys and telling them what questions to ask. Nobody should have even mentioned what he said, to make it clear that kind of fraud will be punished by the media. But I barely saw the sham mentioned outside liberal blogs.
Thanks MJFrog. That’s exactly the question, partly because - unlike “why does he do it?” - it is potentially answerable.
I know I've said this before here, but I'll repeat: Truth doesn't have the same meaning for Trump that it does for everyone else. He's a psychopathic narcissist. There is only one truth: DJT is the smartest and bestest at everything. In his mind he's not lying. He's lost touch with reality long ago and he thinks he can bend reality to whatever he wants it to be. It's just another feature of his greatness.
I came to the comments to say something along the same lines, but you put it better. Once he says something, in his mind it becomes true, and he is angered that other people dare to disagree.
I go with liar. We all know a tariff is the same as a sales tax, but Trump is the worst kind of lying used car salesman, willing to say anything to make a sale. You drive away thinking you have a great car with a full warranty, but then car breaks down two blocks off the lot and you find out you have to pay to get it fixed.
Unfortunately, the MAGAts love Trump's lies like flies do a fresh steaming turd.
I think the correct answer is he doesn't care if it is true or not, he just tells people stuff and they believe him. Honestly, why is this still a puzzle? Trump said himself on tape that he hasn't got the slightest interest in whether or he is telling the truth, he will say whatever he thinks he needs to say to close the deal.
" he will say whatever he thinks he needs to say to close the deal."
When you combine this correct observation with his own thinking that he is invincible then the lies justify themselves in his mind
The real problem comes in when he knows he's gonna lose - an election, on a business deal and so on. How does he NOT stay out of the publics eyes? Leave the country? Possible, given his fear of going to jail. Doing something like that would end the GOP as we know it. The infighting between old and MAGA republicans would be quite vocal.
I have always dismissed the idea that Trump would leave the country
I'm beginning to have second thoughts on that one
There's a property on St Helena that might suit him well
My bet is a penthouse in Dubai. No extradition treaty, family deeply networked in the region financially, opulent surroundings. Even he is smart enough to stay away from/not depend on Putin, very few other places without extradition are plush or friendly (from a security not amicability POV) enough.
So many assumptions in that question.
1) There is any relationship between what Trump says and reality.
2) He knows that what he is saying is false
3) He cares that what he says is false
4) That there is any consistency between what he says now and any other time.
5) That what he says has any relationship to what he has or will do.
Statistically, none of these seem to have significant evidence.
And finally, as the finance guys say, "Past performance is no guarantee of future results."
What does make sense is to ask why he said something, which usually turns out to be determining what he thinks is in it for him,
Thumbs up.
Would these tariffs get rid of the loophole Temu uses to send small value packages to the US? Because that loophole already makes it harder for US retailers that import from China to beat out Temu on prices. Raising tariffs while leaving the loophole open for Temu would just massacre US retailers.
Who the fuck orders anything from Temu?
Moron.
He has also be saying that rising sea levels are good because they will create more ocean front property. Which is, obviously, not how reducing land mass works. But the answer to your question is he's both stupid and a liar. People point out his stupidy, and he coninues with it because he thinks his supporters are stupid too. That's one thing he is not wrong about.
I don't think Trump thinks in terms of the truth or falsehood of his statements. Not at all.
I think that he is concerned only with the effects that his statements have on his audience.
In that sense, and for "his" audience, he is far from being a moron. I wouldn't let him build a bridge, but he can very effectively sway opinions in a certain audience.
The drawback for him is that the audience he sways is not composed of critical thinkers, or it leans heavily racist and/or punitive, and thankfully, that does not describe the majority of Americans.
Trump is the one person who left the presidency less qualified than when he came in.
He's both. But at times it's difficult to determine if a statement is a lie or moronic. The depths of his dishonesty and his ignorance make the Mariana Trench look like a mere gully. It's possible he doesn't know. It's also possible he knows his cult will believe him no matter what he says.
Or a movie trailer that he thinks is a documentary because he has only occasional and brief interactions with reality - like a rock skipping across a still pond.
Remember his weird gobbles about women tied up in vans that turned out to come from a "Sicario" trailer?
The part that boggles my mind is he could say the exact opposite tomorrow and believe it as sincerely as he believes what he says today. And so would his followers.
He, and they, have no object permanence at all.
He has legions of servants to make sure he's dressed, fed, and cleaned up enough to appear in public.
I have no idea who is doing the same for his worshipful zombies.
Here's another one from his Cheerios event a few days ago:
"You used to be able to get cereal for 20, 30 bucks a pound. Now it's at least a hundred dollars a pound, probably."
Probably. He makes it perfectly clear that he doesn't even attempt to get facts right or to do any research. He knows he can make up whatever shit comes into his head and his followers will buy it. It's mass hysteria.
That’s the essence of it. We all thought GW Bush was the “regular guy at the bar” but Trump turns it up to 11 on a scale of ten.
He knows his audience. He saw, correctly, that there are a few million doofuses in the US and the Dems did not have a policy plank aimed at the stupid. So he thought to himself, “f it, I’ll take those votes if you don’t want them.”.
Dems just were not, and frankly are not, prepared to counter.
I'm pretty sure that's a fake quote. I Googled it and it originated at a satirical site.
How do you tell the real Trump quotes from the fake ones?
"a tax on a foreign country"
Well that is a unique analysis. Most likely somebody has fed him this idea.
Democrats should turn this around - tell people it's a tax on YOU, and you don't even get to see it like the way we do sales taxes. Or even vote on it - presidents do it unilaterally now. Americans hate paying taxes. Exploit it.
"People will just believe you. You just tell them and they believe you."
Trump, as quoted by Billy Bush in the New York Times, 2017
Years later, "Does Trump know he's lying?",
Drum's is the second I've seen today.
For MAGA the United States is a foreign country, a colonizing empire which is taxing them without representation and holding them prisoner at gunpoint.
Talking to them is irrelevant, and almost always the wrong thing to do, because it engages and validates their mania, but we can talk about them.
There is strong evidence that the Chinese government is heavily subsidizing the country's producers of green technologies including vehicle batteries, electric vehicles, wind turbines, and railroad rolling stock. Trump alludes to this occasionally, but makes such a hash of it, it's not clear if that's where he wants to apply tariffs. Targeted tariffs here could make a difference for American jobs.
He does often blather about across-the-board tariffs on everything coming in from China. That's just nuts.