Only in America can a dope for the ages – a tax cheat and adjudicated financial fraudster who bankrupted casinos – still manage to fail upward almost all the way to Presidency II. And have the gall to parade himself as an economics genius.
I can say with total confidence that I know more than Donald Trump about basic economics, because I paid attention as a college freshman in my Econ 101 course. The professor explained to us that when a country slaps a tariff on another country’s foreign goods, the targeted country ships its goods anyway and simply passes those costs to the consumer on the receiving end. I assume that this fundamental fact was taught at Wharton when Trump was a student, but I guess the dog ate his homework.
And so, for the benefit of “the poorly educated” – who love him the most, as he loves them – he surfaced Oct. 15 at The Economic Club of Chicago to stump for the tariffs (“100, 200, 2000 percent”) that he’s thirsting to slap on foreign manufacturers if voters in their wisdom return him to power. But, alas, the sultan of stupid didn’t realize that he would be fact-checked at every turn by his inquisitor, Bloomberg editor in chief John Micklethwait.
See that photo at the top of this column? That’s how he looks when someone with superior intellect dares to detail his ignorance of basic economics.
“To me,” said Trump, “the most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff. It’s my favorite word.” But Micklethwait then stated the obvious – that tariffs on all imported goods would wind up as a tax on American consumers, thus reigniting domestic inflation (as 16 Nobel-prizewinning economists recently pointed out) – and he did so in language that even a dolt like Trump should’ve been able to comprehend:
“Three-trillion worth of imports – and you will add tariffs to every single one of them, and push up the cost for all of these (consumers) to buy foreign goods. That is just simple mathematics.”
Indeed, analysts at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a nonpartisan think tank, concluded in September that if Trump II were to impose his tariffs (and deport millions of immigrants who do essential work in our economy), the GDP could be nearly 10% lower than current forecasts, thus shrinking output and lessening consumer demand.
But when Micklethwait tried to school Trump on simple mathematics, the stable genius replied: “I’ve always been very good at mathematics.” His bright idea is that if foreign manufacturers are hit with tariffs, they’ll cry uncle and move all their facilities to the United States. Trump’s dream is to make these tariffs “so high, so horrible, so obnoxious, that they’ll come right away.”
Again, Micklethwait stated the obvious: Foreign manufacturers can’t simply uproot all their facilities “right away” and magically resurface in the USA. In his words, “That will take many, many, many years.” He also pointed out that Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal (“which is hardly a communist organization”) is strongly critical of Trump’s economic pipe dreams … to which Trump retorted, “What does The Wall Street Journal know?”
Right, he knows more than The Journal, he knows more than Micklethwait, and he knows more than the Peterson Institute – which warns in a new report that “despite his ‘make the foreigners pay’ rhetoric, this package of policies does more damage to the US economy than to any other in the world.” But what’s fascinating is how someone who purportedly knows so much gets stumped so easily by basic questions.
When Micklethwait pointed out that millions of small businesses rely on imported goods, and asked what Trump would do to help small businesses hit by tariff-triggered price hikes on those goods, Trump went off the rails with a riff about Apple, and never answered the question.
But he wasn’t totally non-responsive. When Micklethwait pointed out the downside of deporting 11 million undocumented workers (“If you reduce immigration – every economist will tell you – if you have fewer people, there is a smaller economy”), Trump did offer an answer of sorts. He railed for several minutes that migrants are murderers. He singled out a woman in the audience: “They will look at you – down (here) a beautiful woman – they’ll look at you and they will kill you.”
He also offered a tariff success story. In his telling, John Deere was planning to move some of its work to Mexico – until he threatened them with tariffs: “Are you ready? John Deere, great company. They announced about a year ago they’re gonna build big plants outside of the United States. Right? They’re going to build them in Mexico … I said, ‘If John Deere builds those plants, they’re not selling anything into the United States.’ They just announced yesterday they’re probably not going to build the plants, OK?”
Well, you guessed it: John Deere made no such announcement Tuesday. And a Deere spokesman said the company has not signaled any such announcement in the future.
But lest we forget, Trump’s obsession with tariffs is nothing new. Back in 2018 (this anecdote was leaked by his own people to CNN), he had a cantankerous phone call with Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau. He threatened to screw up free trade between America and Canada by levying tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum. He said he wanted to protect our national security. Trudeau demanded to know how Trump could possibly justify such a step – against a close ally, no less – in the name of national security.
To which Trump reportedly retorted, “Didn’t you guys burn down the White House?”
Uh, nope, duh Canadians didn’t do it. Canada didn’t even become a country until 1867, which was 53 years after duh Brits burned the White House.
So the question remains: Are there are enough poorly-educated voters to once again coronate the sultan of stupid?
Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net and is distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, November 15, 2024
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