Prank
Trump is doing his tariff thing.
Donald Trump just took the biggest gamble of his young second presidency.
His hammer-blow 25% tariffs against Canada and Mexico that hit at midnight dealt a fresh shock to an economy showing alarming signs of slowing growth and rising inflation – a perilous mix for any president.
Trump also doubled an additional tariff on all Chinese imports to 20%, in a trio of decisions that sent stocks – a cherished metric of his own performance – tumbling.
Not to worry. All part of the plan. These guys know what they’re doing. This is three dimensional chess.
“It’s going to be very costly for people to take advantage of this country. They can’t come in and steal our money and steal our jobs and take our factories and take our businesses and expect not to be punished,” Trump said Monday. “And they’re being punished by tariffs. It’s a very powerful weapon that politicians haven’t used because they were either dishonest, stupid, or paid off in some other form.”
Hmm. The economics of punishment. That works, does it?
Trump’s decision to launch full scale trade wars with America’s neighbors is a landmark moment in his second term and is just the latest occasion when he’s stuck to his sweeping campaign trail promises despite the enormous disruption that honoring his word entails.
Maybe because enormous disruption is what he wants? Because it’s fun? Like pulling the wings off insects?
Tariffs – a device used for generations earlier in America’s history but that was largely phased out in the 20th century – are stamped in the DNA of Trump’s “America First” movement. Their implementation against Canada mirrors the worldview behind his eruption at Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office last week. For Trump, all foreign policy is a monetary transaction in which the United States is either winning or being taken advantage of. This mindset precludes the idea that America has friends or allies with common interests. Instead, his use of tariffs to try to wring concessions from Mexico and Canada on immigration shows that his White House views them not as an exclusively economic tool but as part of a deeper national security arsenal.
Or to put it more simply, another way to bully everyone.
He’s not stupid, like those others! No, sirree! He’s a genius! The fact that those tariffs will actually be paid by the people who voted for him, making them poorer? Immaterial! The fact that Canada and Mexico will now trade with other countries instead? Immaterial! Inside his genius brain he’s winning, and that’s all that counts! Crops rotting in the fields because they can no longer be exported (even if there were workers to harvest them, which there aren’t), sending farmers bankrupt? Immaterial! Crops for domestic consumption being destroyed by unpredicted weather disasters? Immaterial! Lysenko? Whoever heard of him? Trump will destroy the USA much more bigly! Covfefe!
Any day now, I expect the ‘Scoobie Doo’ denouement to drop in our laps as Trump pulls off his mask to reveal that he was Vladimir Putin all along.
I thought people voted for Trump because they wanted him to end wars, make the nation more secure, create more jobs, and boost the economy. Barely a few weeks in and he’s picking fights with America’s allies, starting trade wars with the country’s neighbours, exposing the government’s most sensitive information to potential foreign agents, slashing good government jobs, consigning civil servants to the unemployment line, panicking the stock market, and putting the economy into meltdown. Surely this isn’t what almost anyone wanted.
Voters were frustrated with the status quo; I get that. There was and is a lot ot be frustrated about. But what the voters have got is starting to look like Iran in 1979: they were right to oppose the Shah’s regime, but bringing in the Ayatollah didn’t make anything better, did it.
Once he gained power, it didn’t take long for the illusory image of the Ayatollah as a revered opposition leader to dissolve, and reality to come into focus: that the man they trusted to remove a fence locked them behind iron bars instead.
Even as Trump fucks everything up, I fear there might not be much anyone can do to stop him if we don’t act quickly enough. I don’t even know who such a “we” is who could try. The absolute power being consolidated by his gang of thugs in the White House is terrifying, and it’s likely to outlive the man himself.
Another example of how Mr. Art-of-the-Deal never keeps a promise, and everything you thought was an agreement is just the new starting point of the next strongarm move. DJT ordered the Canadian and Mexican tariffs in week one, but when he got pushback, he agreed not to impose the tariffs. And now they’ve reared their ugly head again, after the first seeds of chaos have been sown. At some point, it’s going to be Sherman’s march to the sea, burning crops, blowing up railroads and bridges, and destroying every bit of industry, equipment, and supplies in his path. In his eagerness to bomb shithole countries back to the Stone Age, he will actually bomb the USA into a Stone Age shithole country. The ruination of the country will prove that he is wrong about tariffs and many other things, but in his deluded post-factual mind, he will never see it, no matter how bad it gets, or even if the effects of his reign of terror reach even him. He is so pig-headed that he will never be able to see or admit what he has done. As ever with malignant narcissists, he will blame everyone but himself.
Will nobody tell Trump how tariffs work? He’s under the impression (or giving the impression) that the countries he’s targeting with these tariffs are going to pay him for the privilege of selling in the US. Canada isn’t going to pay a dime; it’s US customers of Canadian goods who are going to be stuck with the bill, or needing to scramble to find alternate sources for the products we can sell more profitably elsewhere. Trump seems to think that, like some hoity- toity credit card with exorbitant annual fees, we’ll pay through the nose in order to be permitted to bow and scrape our way back into his good graces.
Wait. We’re talking about trade, right? Where does the “steal our money” happen? Are these countries shoplifting on a massive scale, stuffing their diplomatic bags with items they’ve pinched from Walmart? Traditionally, tariffs were used to protect domestic production from foreign competition. But what if there are few (or no) domestic producers left to protect? What’s the point? As for “stealing our jobs” and “taking” factories and businesses, wasn’t it American companies moving to those countries? Are they not permitted to do that? Isn’t it the goal of corporations to seek out the cheapest source of labour, the least regulated and profitable locations for their facilities? This corporate strategy has been used to roll back wages and working conditions in a race to the bottom. This is how the game is played, and if it was going in Trump’s favour, he would have no problem at all with it; he’d say he was “winning.”
Corporations have no loyalty to anything but profit; this is a stance which Trump should appreciate, as he follows it himself (albeit, given his record, with limited success). Taxing the corporations that claim to be “American” while doing all of their manufacturing overseas would make more sense. Fighting for a level playing field internationally in terms of worker pay, environmental protection, and carbon pricing for shipping would, in the long run, make a lot more sense and make the world a better place for everyone. But that’s not what Trump wants. He wants obedience and gratitude, and he doesn’t care how many Americans have to suffer until he gets it. Good luck with that. The US isn’t in a position to dictate in this way any more. Trump can’t make anyone trade with him if they don’t want to. Beating with the tariff stick won’t really help. It might be awkward or difficult, but the world can bypass or ignore the US much more easily than in the past. There are other markets, and other customers.
Innumerable people on both sides of the aisle have told him, over and over. But no one has the ability to make him understand them.
He seems to be simply a raw, animalistic ego. He is mostly reactive to stimuli, basic pleasure or pain. He wants what he wants because of visceral positive emotions. He hates what he hates out of jealousy and vindictiveness. In many instances, cruelty is the point. He enjoys hurting people.
He thinks that what he does won’t affect him. He’s too rich to suffer any consequences; therefore, he never considers that any ill effects would ever come back on him. It will be someone else’s fault. He doesn’t recognize his part in creating whatever negative experiences come his way.
At some point, though, in a world careening toward self-destruction, money will cease to have value. There is no substitute for water, or air, or survivable temperatures. Money can’t buy it if it’s not there.
Nope. They wanted him to break things, especially the government. The rest is just trying to put a decent face on it, rather than call the voters what they are – a basket of deplorables.
The voters that got him over the line *did* want those things… We told them they weren’t getting them but oh no, the Dems think men can be women and math is racist. Well on the other side of the ridiculous beliefs ledger is well, all this shit.
[…] a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on […]
Sure, BKiSA, but in order to get there, they had to either ignore 99% of what he said, or have some serious cognitive dissonance. Since Trump made no secret of his intentions, they either wanted it or didn’t give a damn who it hurt. Well, I got news for them. It’s going to hurt you, me, them…all of us.
They knew they would likely get hurt but as somebody said back in 2017, Trump supporters will happily eat a turd for breakfast if there’s a chance a liberal might smell their breath.
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
Indeed. He seems to have the cognitive abilities of a toddler, with half their capacity for emotional regulation and no capacity for empathy in sight, without the excuse of youth or inexperience. I’m not generally prone to committing violence, but I find myself with a very real desire to just smack his particular man upside the back of his head >:-/
ibbica:
Your imagination seems less violent than mine.
It keeps going to executing Agent Orange who Putin got in the White House in the most painful ways possible.