Trump was asked a question at some prestigious NYC economic club fundraising event this past week about how his administration would pay for the country's child care needs, and the huge expense these needs represent:
"But when you talk about those numbers [child care costs] compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to—but they’ll get used to it very quickly—and it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s going to take care. We’re going to have—I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud [yeah, 'we're going to drain the swamp' of corruption says the biggest political swamp monster in the history of the republic] and all of the other things that are going on in our country, because I have to stay with child care."
In other words, it's all for the kids and taxing foreign trade will fix everything. This is like how in 2016 he was going to solve the affordable health care problem, done deal, only he could fix it, and then got into office, tried to kill the ACA, which would actually have done nothing to make hc more affordable, and exclaimed, 'who knew, health care is hard but our new, better, perfect plan is coming out next week.' Never came out. And how in this instance "they'll [foreign nations] get used to it [tariffs] very quickly" equals Mexico will pay for the wall. They didn't.
Is it possible tariffs wouldn't depress foreign trade? Tariffs could be and are traditionally a way to discourage imports and spur domestic production but the tack would be to target strategic trade goods. Trump's plan to tax everything is a very crude way to go about it and almost certainly will reduce imports on products with relatively elastic demand and, again, will be inflationary, just to cover the higher labor costs in the US if it did actually stir more domestic production. And, of course, where possible consumers will look for cheaper alternatives to Trump's tariff inflated prices.
By the way, again, there is a place for using tariffs strategically to boost domestic production and the US is already doing stuff like this with high-end computer chips, backed by the bipartisan Chips Act. Another productive and expansionary feature of Biden's economic record, or Bidenomics, that the mainstream media disparages with snide innuendo.
The notion that there is some significant state tax revenue stream in foreign trade that we heretofore haven't captured or bothered to take and all our trade partners are fleecing us, and Trump's special hard-headed art of the deal business tycoon genius has figured this out, is preposterous nonsense but the kind of huckster junk economics bigot isolationists go for on Fox. Trump's like a megalomaniacal used car salesman with epic delusions of grandeur.
And then on top of this the guy is still going on about how he is going to reduce "waste and fraud." Please! "We're going to drain the swamp" of corruption says the biggest corrupt political and economic swamp monster in the history of the republic. How's that worked out so far?
"When he was in office, Trump launched a trade war in 2018 by putting tariffs of up to 25% on $50 billion worth of Chinese products. The next year he added another set of 10% tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports, and the next year he did it again, this time on an additional $112 worth of Chinese products. The nonpartisan Tax Foundation calculates that this amounted to an $80 billion tax a year on American consumers, costing the average household about $300 a year and costing the U.S. about 142,000 jobs."
So we already know by recent experience that Trump's tariff schemes will actually cost American consumers and not help pay for child care or anything else. Wonder how much these simple facts will get reported on the nightly news and in the NY Times and WaPo? Fact check this Politifact.
This story is not quite as abhorrent as the story last week suggesting Trump's plan to deport 10 to 20 million immigrants beginning in 2025 was his affordable housing economic plan. But it is more of the same selfish obliviousness to the basic rights of common working people and only works and gets platformed on major media at all because it lets big business and corporate rule off the hook and blames everything on foreign states and immigrants and people of color.
P.S. "This morning the Department of Justice announced an indictment charging Dimitri Simes for violating U.S. sanctions against Russia. Simes allegedly worked for a sanctioned Russian television station and laundered the money from his work. Simes advised Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign."
Trump cheated in 2016 election, treasonously, he cheated in 2020 election, again, treasonously, was impeached for one of his efforts to cheat in the '20 election, took boxes and boxes of stolen top secret national security documents from the government, and fomented a fake elector scheme and violent failed coup attempt to change the outcome of the election and overthrow the democratic government of the US.
But the reprobate is the nominee of the pathetic, degraded, and bottomlessly corrupt Republican party and the worst-of-the-worst in the Billionaire class, so here we are.
Letters from an American Historian
