Trade: As Usual Trump Has It All Wrong
If there is one area it can be said of Trump that he has had a lifelong ideology, it is in the region of trade. And of course along with the rest of his harebrained thinking, he has it mostly wrong — casinos, bust; airline, bust; Trump stakes, bust; Trump water, bust; Trump University, sued and lost 50 million for fake courses.
The only thing that con man Trump is good at is promoting himself, and branding — a natural politician for sure. (My apologies to America’s truly fine statesman politicians past and present.) And that brings us to his destructive tariff notions.
The marvelous one thinks that slapping tariffs on countries with which we run a trade deficit is a great and positive way to force countries to treat us fairly, which only means that the Donald is totally clueless of what trade deficits actually indicate.
If one goes back and looks at the numbers, one will always find that when a country’s economy is running along great guns, it also runs a large trade deficits. Why not? When it citizens are rolling in dough they can afford to go on a spending spree. So why not buy inexpensive quality stuff from other countries as well as your own. In other words trade deficits are always a sign of a healthy economy.
But then some segment of domestic manufactures will start whining that foreign commerce is killing their business. So then a demagogue like Trump comes along and says, yes, those other countries are being unfair, and starts a trade war. And then like the king who killed the goose that laid the golden eggs, the huge tax burden that tariffs place on domestic consumes suffocates the economy. It’s economics 101, another course for which trump never read a textbook.
So all you rubes out there who love the Trumpster, if he manages to keep this trade war going for at least a year, try comparing your Walmart prices at that time with today’s prices. No doubt — whatsoever — you will find that the Russian loving wizard has made you a lot poorer than when you invited the moronic fox into the henhouse.
