When former President Donald Trump was asked about his plan to lower the cost of groceries, he said that he would slap tariffs on foreign food imports.Scott Lincicome and Sophia Bagley of the libertarian Cato Institute, however, believe Trump's plan is "deranged" and they write in The Atlantic that ...
He doesn’t understand the nuances of making policy decisions, so his default answer to stuff like this is to just impose tariffs because that’s all he knows. He doesn’t care to understand and would likely eat the crayons you use if you were to try to explain it to him. He’s just incapable of that sort of mental growth.
I don’t know how you can miss that, though.
Tariffs on imported goods means the price raises to cover the increased cost to import it.
Tariffs are a mechanism to encourage domestic production by making foreign competition more expensive.
It’s literally the opposite of reducing the cost to consumers.
Trump has to understand this. But he knows his rabid base do not. So he says it like it’s going to help consumers, rather than exclusively the domestic producers that are already overcharging.
You’re giving him way too much credit. Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. While Trump has certainly performed acts out of malice, he is also the epitome of stupidity. He’s suggested nuking hurricanes, injecting bleach, and has stared straight into the sun during a solar eclipse, etc, etc. He’s a terrible person of course, but he’s also a complete moron.
Sure. He’s an idiot, no argument. But I think he understands leverage, and what tariffs means to domestic leverage over their consumers because of lack of competition. But ultimately, his understanding doesn’t matter, the voters understanding does. And I doubt many who are considering voting for him understand that tariffs are worst for them personally.
Honestly no, I don’t think Trump understands. The way he talks about his precious tariffs, I’m pretty sure he’s under the impression that imposing a tariff on Chinese goods means making China pay for it. It’s really just the latest iteration of “build a wall and make Mexico pay for it.”
Who says? It seems like these days he doesn’t even know which state or city he’s in, I think the likelihood of him understanding literally any political theory at all is close to zero.
It’s certainly possible, but I don’t buy that level of ignorance.
Trump was savvy enough to keep interest rates low to heavily inflate real estate as the obvious money dump for free money. As a real estate mogul, this directly benefited him personally.
And don’t give me that nieve nonsense that the president doesn’t control the fed reserve. Trump’s corruption was thorough and complete.
Trump absolutely understands basic economic principles of supply and demand. He is constantly trying to manipulate competition to give himself more power so he can gain from it. It’s the same as raising tariffs to give domestic producers more power so they can raise their profits at the cost to the consumer.
He just doesn’t give a shit about the consumer, only the kickbacks he gets from the producers.
He doesn’t understand anything. He’s lived in a completely separate reality his entire life.