Why doesn’t Trump just stop lying about the tariffs. He has been saying and said again today that the US Treasury is getting billions of dollars in tariffs from China. Trump is either an economic illiterate or is simply lying.
“For more than a year now, Donald Trump has claimed that his economy-dinging trade war is a great development for the country because of all the money “China” is paying the U.S. Treasury. “I am a Tariff Man,” he tweeted last December. “We are right now taking in $billions in Tariffs. MAKE AMERICA RICH AGAIN.” In May, after escalating the dispute with Beijing by raising tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese imports from 10% to 25%, he insisted, “Tariffs are NOW being paid to the United States by China of 25% on 250 Billion Dollars worth of goods & products. These massive payments go directly to the Treasury of the U.S.” In July he screeched, “We are receiving Billions of Dollars in Tariffs from China, with possibly much more to come. These Tariffs are paid for by China devaluing & pumping, not by the U.S. taxpayer!” A month later it was: “Massive amounts of money from China and other parts of the world is pouring into the United States for reasons of safety, investment, and interest rates! We are in a very strong position.… A beautiful thing to watch!”
“Of course, as everyone outside of the Oval Office and his most blindly loyal followers know, tariffs are not paid for by China but by U.S. companies. If those companies manage to stay in business at all, the costs are then passed on to American consumers, a giant point of clarification that’s been noted by economists, analysts, and the media, and which was conceded by National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow in May. And on Tuesday the president himself admitted it!”
“Speaking to reporters before leaving his New Jersey golf course, Trump explained the reason the administration decided to wait until December 15 to impose new tariffs on goods like cell phones, laptops, video game consoles, shoes, and other consumer products. “We’re doing this for Christmas season, just in case some of the tariffs would have an impact on U.S. customers,” he said, adding that “so far they’ve had virtually none.” Indeed, the new tariffs would have had a big impact on consumers, with Webush Securities estimating the cost of an iPhone would have increased by between $75 and $100. “I think the president wanted to avoid being the Grinch who stole Christmas,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics. “These delayed tariff hikes would have landed squarely on American consumers.”
I know ignoring most of what he says has worked very well for me.
The notion that we should just ignore the president of the United States is not one that makes any sense in the foreign policy world.
The president's words used to matter. They used to be official policy. No more.
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index so far that consumers are bearing this tariffs? China has devalued RMB against dollar by 10+% since trade war started, trying to offset Trump's tariffs. That's why you can't give any evidence that the tariffs have been hurting consumers. Using general and abstract theory is hobby of pseudo-intellectuals from liberal camp. Stop copying their hobby.
The CPI is up roughly 2% year over year for everything they measure except for energy (thanks Obama you asshole).
And let’s see what the September report shows as Trump tariffs continue to fuck consumers.
Link: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/
There is no fact/data support your claim. Again, it's just superficial to use economics 101, a very general theory to treat this complicated trade issue reality.
This is actually a deliberate strategy - he believes that public impressions of the economy are much more important than actual numbers. He's right, when it comes to elections.
And he believes that he can shape those impressions. Facts are not as important. So he creates this whole us-versus-them narrative with the Chinese, Europeans, Japanese, Mexicans - everybody, pretty much - and then just tries to make it a reality by force of personality.
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