Trump doesn't understand trade deficits.
He seems to think they're subsidies.
But he's given to so much fantastical thinking & rhetoric it's impossible to know what he really believes. But that's also what makes him such a great con man. Just "flood the zone" with lies, fantasies & half truths and keep everyone reeling.
He had to lie about fentanyl on the Canadian border in order to manufacture a crisis to "legally" abrogate an ongoing trade agreement. Will anyone even remember that a month from now?
But so much, even beyond this, is just lies, lies, lies ....
Regarding trade deficits, it's like someone having a credit card, overspending like a crazy person, and then blaming the business he bought from ("they're ripping us off") for that person going into debt.
Except it's actually worse than that ....
In effect, the US prints money to use as debt to buy foreign goods it doesn't or no longer can manufacture for itself.
So all those deficits he's so concerned about are actually funded with US dollars that are, in turn, often reinvested back into the US economy via the purchase of assets like stocks, bonds, real estate, etc. by the same countries supposedly "ripping us off."
It's just ridiculous to blame foreigners for that. The world is already-- or has been before tariffs-- quite literally helping to keep the US economy afloat by funding its debt.
Those foreign countries might actually buy American manufactured goods with those same dollars except for the fact that America doesn't make much of anything anymore for them to buy. Weapons, some pharmaceuticals ... what else exactly? And also because a strong US dollar just makes US exports of what surplus goods they do make uncompetitive.
MAGA's many, often fictional grievances and cloying sense of victimization require enemies like immigrants & foreigners to underpin them. Nothing can ever be their own fault. They must always be the victims and Trump exploits that.
They're not completely wrong about their plight, but they should instead try blaming their own financial elites for a change. The US long ago de-industrialized, "offshored" its manufacturing base, and left them behind, in effect, by adopting the "financialization" of its own economy over more than five decades.
Good luck to MAGA in returning to a time before that ....
He seems to think they're subsidies.
But he's given to so much fantastical thinking & rhetoric it's impossible to know what he really believes. But that's also what makes him such a great con man. Just "flood the zone" with lies, fantasies & half truths and keep everyone reeling.
He had to lie about fentanyl on the Canadian border in order to manufacture a crisis to "legally" abrogate an ongoing trade agreement. Will anyone even remember that a month from now?
But so much, even beyond this, is just lies, lies, lies ....
Regarding trade deficits, it's like someone having a credit card, overspending like a crazy person, and then blaming the business he bought from ("they're ripping us off") for that person going into debt.
Except it's actually worse than that ....
In effect, the US prints money to use as debt to buy foreign goods it doesn't or no longer can manufacture for itself.
So all those deficits he's so concerned about are actually funded with US dollars that are, in turn, often reinvested back into the US economy via the purchase of assets like stocks, bonds, real estate, etc. by the same countries supposedly "ripping us off."
It's just ridiculous to blame foreigners for that. The world is already-- or has been before tariffs-- quite literally helping to keep the US economy afloat by funding its debt.
Those foreign countries might actually buy American manufactured goods with those same dollars except for the fact that America doesn't make much of anything anymore for them to buy. Weapons, some pharmaceuticals ... what else exactly? And also because a strong US dollar just makes US exports of what surplus goods they do make uncompetitive.
MAGA's many, often fictional grievances and cloying sense of victimization require enemies like immigrants & foreigners to underpin them. Nothing can ever be their own fault. They must always be the victims and Trump exploits that.
They're not completely wrong about their plight, but they should instead try blaming their own financial elites for a change. The US long ago de-industrialized, "offshored" its manufacturing base, and left them behind, in effect, by adopting the "financialization" of its own economy over more than five decades.
Good luck to MAGA in returning to a time before that ....
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