The hyper simplistic moron who squats in the Oval Office actually thinks he’ll win a trade war against countries that sell steel and aluminum to the United States. He is clueless and way in over his comb-over. His Chief Economic Advisor jumped ship today and Thursday’s meeting on tariffs has been cancelled. The idiot won’t listen. Politico:
When Cohn, during an Oval Office meeting earlier this year, told Trump that the tariffs will cost more jobs than they would save and presented evidence that President George W. Bush’s 2002 steel tariffs failed to achieve their goals, the president rejected Cohn’s arguments. The president told people present at the meeting that he was deeply skeptical of economists, adding that anybody can find an economist to echo their worldview, according to two people familiar with the deliberations.
Now, instead of relying on economic analyses and academic debates about trade policy, Cohn and other tariff opponents are pointing to market reaction, widespread anger among GOP leaders in Congress and the donor class and the threats from Europe, Mexico and China to retaliate.
They’re doing more than threatening, plans are in place. Slate:
In response to tariffs Trump announced last week, the European Union has prepared retaliatory measures to hit Trump where it hurts: purple states such as Wisconsin (with a tariff on Harley-Davidsons) and Florida (orange juice), plus Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s home state, Kentucky (bourbon). But Trump wouldn’t just be hit by Europe. He’d be hit across the U.S. in November with ads, starring Republican politicians and local business leaders, that blame him for raising taxes and killing jobs.
Since Trump announced his tariff plan on Thursday, Republican lawmakers have excoriated it. They’ve called it a “huge job-killing tax hike” that would wipe out what families gained from tax reform. Conservative economists and business groups say the tariffs jeopardize 5 million jobs at companies that would have to pay more for steel and millions more jobs in industries that would be targeted for retaliation. The goal of these warnings is to change Trump’s mind. But if he goes through with his plan, as he’s promised to do, the dire predictions will be replayed in this fall’s elections.
Republicans all over the country are up in arms, and with justification. Here are just a few, and these are not the only voices to rise up against this newest ill advised scheme of Trump’s by any means.
Pennsylvania’s Republican senator, Pat Toomey, says Trump’s plan “will increase costs on American consumers, cost our country jobs, and invite retaliation from other countries.” Charlie Dent, one of the state’s Republican congressmen, says the aluminum tariffs would hurt “companies in Pennsylvania, like the Hershey Company, that rely on aluminum as part of their packaging and manufacturing process.” Ohio’s top two Republicans, Gov. John Kasich and Sen. Rob Portman, caution that the tariffs could impose “higher prices” on consumers and “hurt the automakers and the other users of steel” in Ohio’s manufacturing industries.
The good news is that Democrats can use this debacle to their advantage.
If Trump goes through with his plan, Democrats running for office in Arizona will quote Republican Sen. John McCain, who warned on Friday that the tariffs would “hurt American workers and consumers.” Democrats in Texas will quote Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who fretted that retaliation from countries slammed by the tariffs would “devastate our agricultural communities.” Democrats in South Carolina will use excerpts from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham’s Sunday interview on Face the Nation. “BMW makes more cars in Greenville, South Carolina, than any plant in the entire BMW family,” Graham pointed out. “Thirty-two percent of the tires exported from the United States come from South Carolina. This tariff on steel is going to hurt them.”
Trump is playing fast and loose with policy and don’t look for it to end here. Politico, again:
Republicans inside and outside the White House worry that the internal breakdown in the administration’s policy-vetting process -- which collapsed after the departure of Porter, who coordinated policy across the administration -- could be repeated on everything from gun control to infrastructure to drug pricing.
“The same thing is going to be true of every other policy issue,” said one person familiar with the internal policy dysfunction.
Trump’s tariff decision was so last-minute that the White House did not alert senior aides across multiple agencies. The State Department was not prepared to send cables to embassies in an effort to explain the decision. And senior leaders on Capitol Hill were caught totally flat footed, even if some Republican aides had long worried Trump would make a dramatic trade move to play to his base in a midterm election year.
Futures were trading fast and furious today. Take a look at the market tomorrow morning. We have an idiot playing to his base who has no remote clue about consequences in the real world, having never faced them, and he won’t listen to the experts who are doing their damnedest to explain it to him.
Listen, you can hear them belly laughing in Beijing.