I’m going to be scathing in my critique because these people are both dishonest and incompetent and deserve to be called out on it.
Here’s their formula:
It’s a ridiculously simplistic formula.
First, a stylistic quibble. What is up with those asterisks in the denominator? I’ll give the authors the benefit of the doubt and assume that they wanted the formula to be understandable by people who aren’t familiar with standard math notation, in which the juxtaposition of variables indicates multiplication. But to see it written that way in an official document is just… weird.
The i subscripts in the formula just indicate that the formula is to be applied to one country at a time — country i. I’ll therefore omit the ‘i’s from the rest of the discussion.
∆𝜏 is the amount by which the tariff currently being placed on that particular country should change (according to the Trump administration bozos) in order to drive the bilateral trade deficit to zero. In other words, 𝜏 (the existing rate) + ∆𝜏 (the change in rate) would be the correct final rate (according to the formula) to achieve the dubious goal of a trade balance.
The inanity of insisting on bilateral trade balances
We’re off to a bad start already, because the notion that every bilateral trade deficit should be zero is ridiculous on its face. Let’s look at a simplified example. Suppose Malawi sells us only mangoes, and the US (henceforth ‘we’, since I’m American) sells them only air conditioners. In order for the trade deficit to be zero, we need to buy the same dollar amount in mangoes that they buy in air conditioners, and we should adjust the tariffs we impose on Malawi until that happens. Why is this desirable? Why should the amount of mangoes be linked to the amount of air conditioners? Who the hell knows? It’s just Trump’s idiotic obsession, and it makes no sense.
To make the stupidity even more obvious, think of an analogous situation. Ernesto sells tacos from a taco truck, and George runs a landscaping business. George occasionally buys tacos from Ernesto, and Ernesto hires George to mow his lawn. Suppose Ernesto pays more to George each month than George spends buying tacos from Ernesto. Is Ernesto being cheated? Is he subsidizing George? No and no. George gets every taco he pays for, and Ernesto gets his lawn mown on schedule. It would be ridiculous to say that either of them is being cheated, and ridiculous to say that the goal should be to make the amounts even.
Why is Trump obsessed with trade deficits? It’s because he is confused enough to believe that the existence of a bilateral trade deficit — a trading deficit with a particular country, Malawi in my example — means that they are cheating us and that we’re subsidizing them. He actually believes that we are just handing over the money, getting nothing in return. In reality, we get every frikkin’ mango we pay for, and they get every air conditioner they pay for. No one is being cheated, and to demand that the dollar amounts should match is idiotic and pointless.
Trump actually declares in his executive order that trade deficits are a “national emergency”. He does this because he doesn’t have the authority to impose tariffs unless it’s a national emergency. Otherwise, the job falls to Congress, where it belongs. Trump is lying about the supposed national emergency.
The formula
According to the USTR statement, the x in the formula is the dollar value of what we export to a particular country, while m is the dollar value of what we import from them. The numerator, x – m, is therefore equal to the trade imbalance. If x is bigger than m, then the difference is positive, and we are running a trade surplus. If x is less than m, then x – m is negative, and we have a trade deficit. But note that they have it backwards in the formula: it should be m – x, not x – m. Why? Because the denominator is positive. If both the numerator and denominator are positive, as they would be in the case of a trade surplus, the formula would deliver a ∆𝜏 that is positive. In other words, the formula as written would actually increase the tariffs for the countries with whom we have a trade surplus, and it would decrease the tariffs for countries with whom we have a trade deficit. The formula therefore punishes the (supposedly) good guys and rewards the (supposedly) bad ones, which is opposite to the administration’s intentions. One more indication of their clown car incompetence.
They could easily have corrected the formula if they were aware of the error. Just put a negative sign in front of the formula, or swap x and m, or redefine x and m as the amounts exported and imported by the other country, instead of the amounts exported and imported by the US. Any one of those three would fix the problem, but no.
Let’s assume that we have corrected that mistake for them and that the numerator now equals the amount of the trade deficit, not the surplus. What about the denominator? Well, it just so happens that the values they chose for 𝜀 and 𝜓 are 4 and 0.25, respectively. Those multiply to 1, thus canceling each other. How convenient. These charlatans actually and blatantly chose the values so that they would cancel out, instead of using the most accurate numbers they could find in the literature. They cheated.
After that suspiciously convenient choice of parameters, the formula is now just ∆𝜏 = trade deficit divided by total imports:
Do they actually apply this formula? No. They massage its output even more. They divide ∆𝜏 by two, for no good reason. That means that for the formula to match the actual tariffs, they should multiply the denominator by 2. They fail to do that, as you’d expect. Why 2? My hypothesis is that even those dunces realized that the numbers they were getting from the formula were ridiculously large, and dividing by 2 was a way to get them down to a range that they considered reasonable. More number fudging with no theoretical justification.
Next problem: according to the corrected formula, ∆𝜏 should be negative in the case of trade surpluses. That is, we should decrease the tariffs on imports from those countries. If the existing tariff rate is small enough, it should even go negative, according to the formula, in order to balance our trade with that country. Trump doesn’t like that, so he has arbitrarily declared that everyone will pay a minimum of 10%, whether there’s a trade deficit or a trade surplus. In other words, the policy, which is already misguided, is also unfair — it says that it’s OK for the US to screw other countries by imposing high tariffs, even if they’re doing the “right” thing and allowing us to run a trade surplus with them.
The actual rates
Here are the charts spelling out the actual tariff rates.
The chart labels them “Reciprocal Tariffs”, but that is a lie, since the formula doesn’t take into account the tariff rate charged by the other countries on our exports to them. It’s completely missing from the formula. They aren’t reciprocal tariffs, they’re misguided tariffs in response to trade deficits, and they punish US importers instead of the countries selling us those goods and services.
The label on the middle column is wrong for the same reason, and it’s even further wrong because it depicts a bilateral trade deficit as a quantifier of “currency manipulation and trade barriers”, which it isn’t. We can run a bilateral trade deficit for no other reason than that Americans want more of what the other country is selling us than they want from us. That’s not “currency manipulation and trade barriers”, and the Trump administration is dishonest for trying to sell it that way.
The numbers in the middle column are apparently those that come straight out of the formula. You can tell, because the tariffs that are actually being imposed by the US are just the middle column divided by 2. That’s the arbitrary factor of 2 I mentioned above. The only exceptions are in those cases where dividing by 2 would leave a less than 10% tariff, in which case the tariff is set to 10%. Gotta make sure that everyone gets screwed at least that much.
The US Trade Representative’s explanation
Now some excerpts from the USTR statement. The very first paragraph:
Reciprocal tariffs are calculated as the tariff rate necessary to balance bilateral trade deficits between the U.S. and each of our trading partners. This calculation assumes that persistent trade deficits are due to a combination of tariff and non-tariff factors that prevent trade from balancing. Tariffs work through direct reductions of imports.
Well, duh. The phrase “tariff and non-tariff factors” covers literally every possible factor in the entire world. Yes, there are actual reasons that we buy more in mangoes from Malawi than they buy from us in air conditioners. Therefore we should conclude that we’re getting ripped off?
While individually computing the trade deficit effects of tens of thousands of tariff, regulatory, tax and other policies in each country is complex, if not impossible, their combined effects can be proxied by computing the tariff level consistent with driving bilateral trade deficits to zero.
Not by any reasonable person. You need to do the homework before making policy decisions that will affect the entire world economy. If they want less of what we’re selling than we want of what they’re selling, that can lead to a trade deficit, independent of all the factors they list above.
This doesn’t mean that trade practices can’t be unfair, but it does mean that to assume something nefarious is going on merely because we’re running a bilateral trade deficit is stupid.
If trade deficits are persistent because of tariff and non-tariff policies and fundamentals, then the tariff rate consistent with offsetting these policies and fundamentals is reciprocal and fair.
No. If we like Malawian mangoes more than the Malawians like our air conditioners, nothing is broken. Nothing is unfair. No reason to blindly punish the Malawians. It just means that American demand for Malawian mangoes is greater than Malawian demand for American air conditioners. No big deal.
A case could be made for nudging the US’s global trade deficit — which is the aggregate trade deficit we’re running with all of our trading partners put together — toward zero, but trying to eliminate every bilateral trade deficit is bonkers. These people are clueless.
Consider an environment in which the U.S. levies a tariff of rate τ_i on country i and ∆τ_i reflects the change in the tariff rate. Let ε<0 represent the elasticity of imports with respect to import prices…
Right there they say that ε < 0, but a few sentences later they assign it a value of 4. The last time I checked, 4 was greater than 0, not less. Their sloppiness is consistent, at least. What is wrong with these folks?
let φ>0 represent the passthrough from tariffs to import prices, let m_i>0 represent total imports from country i, and let x_i>0 represent total exports. Then the decrease in imports due to a change in tariffs equals ∆τ_i*ε*φ*m_i<0. Assuming that offsetting exchange rate and general equilibrium effects are small enough to be ignored, the reciprocal tariff that results in a bilateral trade balance of zero satisfies:
As noted earlier, they have the numerator backwards. It should be positive for a trade deficit, not negative, in order for ∆𝜏 to be positive, which represents an increase in tariff rates.
To calculate reciprocal tariffs, import and export data from the U.S. Census Bureau for 2024. Parameter values for ε and φ were selected. The price elasticity of import demand, ε, was set at 4.
Which inside the Trump administration is less than 0, lol. And how convenient that εφ multiplies to 1, as noted above.
Recent evidence suggests the elasticity is near 2 in the long run (Boehm et al., 2023), but estimates of the elasticity vary. To be conservative, studies that find higher elasticities near 3-4 (e.g., Broda and Weinstein 2006; Simonovska and Waugh 2014; Soderbery 2018) were drawn on. The elasticity of import prices with respect to tariffs, φ, is 0.25.
It wasn’t to be conservative. It was to fudge the numbers so that the product εφ came out to be 1. And picking a value of 4 for elasticity isn’t “being conservative” in the sense of “this value is more likely to be correct”. It’s conservative in the sense of “we’d better make this number big because otherwise the tariffs will be so outrageously huge that everyone will see that we’re idiots.”
Think about it. They want φ to be small (whether or not the evidence supports it), because they want to maintain the fiction that other countries will mostly absorb the tariffs and that importers and retail customers will shoulder less of the burden and therefore experience less inflation. On the other hand, a small φ balloons the value of ∆𝜏 to ridiculous levels. So they set 𝜀 to 4 to bring ∆𝜏 down, even while acknowledging that the true value of 𝜀 is closer to 2.
The recent experience with U.S. tariffs on China has demonstrated that tariff passthrough to retail prices was low (Cavallo et al, 2021).
I haven’t verified that, but either way I would sure like to see the actual number. Why didn’t they include it? Is it really 0.25? In any case, the question of pass-through to retail prices is irrelevant when you’re trying to determine which country is absorbing the cost of the tariffs. It’s the pass-through factor to importers that is relevant, and that is close to 1, even if the pass-though to retail customers is less. That means that US importers are bearing the cost of the tariffs and passing some of that cost on to consumers. It’s inflationary, and it’s a tax by the US government on US importers, not a tax on foreign countries. Which contradicts Trump’s whole rationale.
The reciprocal tariffs were left-censored at zero.
No, they were “left-censored” at 10, as you can see by looking at the charts. 10 is the minimum tariff you’ll see in the third column of the charts.
Higher minimum rates might be necessary to limit heterogeneity in rates and reduce transshipment.</p
No explanation of why “heterogeneity in rates” is to be avoided, and no comment on the fact that it isn’t avoided, given the large range of new tariff rates in the third column of the charts. That means there’s still plenty of incentive for transshipment. Take Vietnam, for instance, with a new rate of 46%. There’s a *lot* of incentive for them to transship through one of the countries with a 10% rate.
Tariff rates range from 0 to 99 percent.
There is no inherent limit. Tariffs could be 100%, 180%, or 2100%. 99% is an arbitrary limit. Tariffs could even be negative in a perverse world, in which case the government would be giving importers a bonus for importing more and nudging us toward a trade deficit. Obviously that wouldn’t happen in practice, but my point is that the 99% is arbitrary, and anyone who thinks tariffs are limited to being less than 100% doesn’t understand tariffs.
The unweighted average across deficit countries is 50 percent, and the unweighted average across the entire globe is 20 percent.
It’s pointless to state the unweighted average. An unweighted average is really just a weighted average with all of the weights set to 1. That gives Liechtenstein equal weight with China, which is stupid. Our trade volume with China is some 1,770 times as great as our trade volume with Liechtenstein, but these geniuses are weighting them evenly and presenting the average as if it had some kind of significance. Morons.
Weighted by imports, the average across deficit countries is 45 percent, and the average across the entire globe is 41 percent. Standard deviations range from 20.5 to 31.8 percentage points.
Here, they tell us that the import-weighted average of tariffs is 41 percent. Combine that with their assumed pass-through rate of 0.25. meaning that exporters in other countries will shoulder 75% of the tariff burden. That’s unrealistic and it clashes with the actual data, but even if you take the Trumpers at their word and assume that only 25% of the additional cost due to tariffs is passed to importers, that’s still over 10%, because 0.25 * 41% is greater than 10%. 10% import inflation! So much for Trump’s campaign promise: “I’ll reduce prices on day one.” Idiot.
Good job, Trump supporters. By voting for him, you put power in the hands of these dishonest and incompetent economic doofuses.
He was married with three children. Why the roommate?
This is all very odd.
I maintain that unless he confesses, it could be difficult to convict him.
The fact that they used a reduced charge indicates they do not yet have the evidence. Possibly don’t have the weapon. No useful witnesses.
Were the list and manifesto in his handwriting? Why are the victims not on the list?
What if he was clever? What if he had an accomplice? What if he isn’t the shooter?
FBI via CNN:
“Law Enforcement now claim there is NO MANIFESTO.”
“There‘s been a lot of press coverage and speculation and discussion of a manifesto. I‘ve seen nothing like a unabomber manifesto in his writings.”
“I have not seen anything involving some sort of political screed or manifesto that would clearly identify what motivated him.”
keiths,
Probably they did not. What about Biden’s pardons? Again do you think we are better off with Harris or Biden as President?
colewd:
Exactly. What about Dempsey? Do you think he belongs back on the street, with the conviction wiped from his record, after only three years in prison? Did the Dear Leader make the right decision?
Our topic is Trump, not Biden or Harris. I say he’s a crap president, and I’ve listed a bunch of reasons why (and there’s more — a lot more — that I didn’t include on the list). You say that I’m “spinning”, “unable to filter bias”, reliant on “suspect sources”, and that I’m a propagandist suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Prove it. Show how unfair my list is by picking it apart, offering your own facts, and making “balanced” arguments against the items on my list.
Due to (or in search of) work he travelled around and lived in at least two places. You’d know this if you watched the coverage in the right place. Your problem is that you prefer conspiracy theorizing.
No, it’s not. And it’s not odd of you to claim that this is odd. Your head is in the wackadoodle Q/MAGA bubble. Whenever reality scratches the bubble, it feels odd to you.
Certainty is the site motto, no?
Oh, the lovely “Just Asking Questions” attitude despite facts hitting you over the head.
Edit: Maybe you are genuinely that thick and not pretending at all, but I do not have any mercy for you. You are the one in USA, while I am half a globe away, yet I know everything about your country better than you. Let that sink in. More optimistically, facts are not hard. The learning curve is tolerable whatever your age. Knowledge is easy peasy these days, purely up to your mindset.
You seem angry about something.
I have found it useful to withhold judgement of people accused of crimes. I know from personal experience as a juror, that the testimony heard in court is not the same as what’s disseminated by the press.
This is a very unusual case, and I’m not being cute when I say the facts are not in.
keiths,
This was our choice in the last election. Perfection has never been available to the voters.
colewd:
Neither of those points is relevant to the topic at hand, which is my list of reasons why Trump is a horrible president. I repeat:
You’re obviously bluffing. You said all of those things about me and my list not because they’re true, but because you were looking for an excuse not to confront the items on the list. The bluff didn’t work.
Though you can’t defend Trump against my charges, you’ll continue to support him anyway. That’s what cult members do. They’ll sooner debase themselves than criticize the cult leader.
You are still dodging both my list and my question about David Dempsey:
keiths,
Your charges are meaningless unless 1. They are real and not simply spin. 2.You have an alternative choice.
The one I looked into was spin so you lost credibility as a reliable source.
If your argument is about how Trump will be seen historically then you have made your prediction. We can wait and see how you did in a few years.
I find people’s priorities interesting.
This thread is nominally about taxes.
Fiddling while Rome burns.
You are being mainly obtuse, which is not cute. Enough facts are in, the most important fact in this discussion being that you don’t know what facts are and where to find them. If this is not disqualifying for an alleged juror in USA, then may God help America.
Yes, it has been interesting to find out how people do not know what tariffs are. Especially how Trump marches through a thousand opportunities to inform himself, but remains impervious to basic knowledge. Solid evidence that his economics degree was bought.
But he sure knows how to grift and wallow in the midst of conflicts of interest. The latest sample (of course golden, what else) https://trumpmobile.com/asset/order-phone6.png
petrushka:
Who are these people whose priorities you find interesting, and what are those priorities?
Indeed it is, and like every lengthy thread at TSZ, its scope has broadened.
Who are the fiddlers, what are you characterizing as “fiddling”, and what does “Rome burns” mean specifically?
If you have a point to make, why not just state it plainly?
colewd,
You keep discrediting my list as “spin” and “propaganda”, and I keep asking you to justify that accusation. For days I’ve been asking, yet you just keep dodging.
If you have truly determined that the list is nothing but spin and propaganda, tell us how you made that determination. Explain how you went down the list, looked at each item, and for each of them said to yourself, “oh, that’s just spin”. What were your criteria? Walk us through the process and tell us why each of those items is merely “spin” in your opinion.
It’ll be great — in one fell swoop you’ll be defending your Dear Leader, exposing me for the TDS-addled propagandist that I am, and demonstrating how carefully and rationally you have evaluated the evidence. It’s a fantastic opportunity, Bill. Are you really going to forfeit the chance to stand up for your Dear Leader?
That makes no sense. Whether someone is good or bad as president is independent of who they ran against. Do you have to know who Lincoln or FDR ran against in order to rank them as among the best presidents we’ve ever had? Do you have to know who Warren G. Harding ran against in order to rank him as among the worst?
Seriously, Bill? I said that Trump “pardons people who assault police officers”. You confirmed that I am correct. I pointed out how ridiculous it would be to claim that every single one of the 1500+ people convicted for January 6 offenses deserved a full pardon. You agreed that they “probably did not”. I provided a list of the horrific things David Dempsey did while attacking police officers, and pointed out how ridiculous it was to assert that his three year stint in prison was excessive and that justice demanded his immediate release. I challenged you on that, and you avoided it completely, even though I asked three times. Everything I said was factual, and you haven’t even disputed my claims, much less proven that they are wrong.
If that’s spin, it’s pretty clear what your criteria are. If a true statement makes the Dear Leader look bad, it’s spin. If a true (or false) statement makes the Dear Leader look good, it’s not spin. Classic cult member behavior.
That isn’t my argument. You’re trying to change the subject again. I know you would much rather punt and say “let’s see what posterity says”, but posterity isn’t the topic. Trump’s present behavior is. I know you would much rather attack Biden and Harris than defend Trump, but Biden and Harris aren’t the topic. Trump is. I’ve made a list (and there’s plenty more where that came from). You’ve labeled it as “spin” and “propaganda”, yet you haven’t identified even one item on the list that fits that description.
You’re in the embarrassing position of being unable to defend your Dear Leader’s actual behavior, and too scared to try, yet continuing to support him. You are deep in a personality cult, and it’s sad to watch.
On a lighter note, some mockery of Trump’s birthday parade:
https://x.com/adagamov/status/1934156480808149279
https://x.com/Bricktop_NAFO/status/1934187278953308194
https://x.com/Bricktop_NAFO/status/1934188013589795322
Note to Bill: I’d say that those qualify as spin because they were no doubt edited to maximize the laugh factor and weren’t intended to depict the parade objectively. The footage is real though, as far as I know, which is hilarious in itself. There are claims on social media that the ambling “marchers” were doing so in silent protest of being forced to participate in Trump’s dog and pony show, but I don’t know if that’s true. It does seem unlikely that they would choose a unit for the parade and not ask them to march. A bunch of guys in fatigues strolling down the street isn’t very impressive, not even if they’re wearing berets (lol), so the protest theory isn’t implausible. I certainly wouldn’t blame them if that was what they were doing.
When I talk about Trump’s pardons, I’m not spinning. I’ve presented the facts as I understand them, and I haven’t omitted any that didn’t fit my argumentative purpose. If you know of any facts demonstrating that the people who assaulted police officers served more time than was warranted, I’m all ears. And don’t try to sidestep Dempsey.
I was under the impression that the parade was requested by the army during the Biden administration, and approved.
keiths,
\
Trump is the current President of the United States. What is the purpose of your “argument”?
Of course, because your impressions come from Q/MAGA brainwash propaganda. And impressions always trump facts.
Even when Trump is the president, tariffs are not paid by other countries. And no, we do not need to wait and see whether they miraculously have a good effect. Already the mere threat of them has been devastating, which was easily predictable.
petrushka:
No, the plans under the Biden administration were for a festival, not a parade. Trump is the one who insisted on a parade, which isn’t surprising since he had wanted one during his first administration after seeing France’s Bastille Day parade. Jim Mattis and other grown-ups in the Pentagon opposed it, and Trump dropped it.
It’s pitiful that Donald Trump of all people wanted a military parade, considering that he is a draft dodger who has repeatedly denigrated the military. And yes, Bill, those are substantiated claims, not “spin” or “propaganda”.
Draft dodger: Trump obtained a bogus letter from a doctor certifying that he had bone spurs and could not serve in Vietnam. In reality, Trump had participated in high school athletics, playing football and baseball (and has claimed that he was “always the best athlete” at his military academy, which is a lie) and even made this claim:
It’s a lie. McCovey was Rookie of the Year in the Majors when Trump was still in the eighth grade. What a pathetic, insecure, dishonest man. And yes, a draft-dodger. Those bone spurs are obviously fictional.
As for Trump disparaging the military, there’s story after story. Among others, he claimed that John McCain was “not a war hero” and said “I like people who weren’t captured.” He disparaged the soldiers who died at Belleau Wood as “losers” and “suckers”. He wanted to exclude wounded veterans from his military parade (the one he was planning during his first term) because “nobody wants to see that”.
He’s totally undeserving of the honor of presiding over a military parade. But he wants to be an American Kim Jong Un, so it’s not at all surprising that he wanted a parade of the kind that North Korea or Russia would stage.
colewd:
I was responding to your claim:
I said:
For days you’ve tried to dismiss that as “spin” and “propaganda” and characterized me as a TDS sufferer who relies on “suspect sources” and is “unable to filter bias”.
I’ve challenged you to demonstrate those claims, and you’ve failed. I’ve challenged you to defend Trump against my charges, and you haven’t rebutted a single one. You have completely failed to defend your Dear Leader.
Who is deranged, the person who laid those charges and can back them up, or the person who continues to support his Dear Leader despite being utterly unable to defend him?
keiths,
The initial subject was on trade and pretty focused. It seems to have gone off course to criticism without a better solution.
. I am not sure what point you think you have made except to others who like you dislike Trump.
colewd:
The thread didn’t “go off course to criticism”. Criticism was the topic! The title of the OP is a clue: “A critique of the Trump tariff policy and formula”. Indeed, the Trump tariff policy took a well-deserved beating in this thread, and you were unable to defend it.
As with many threads at TSZ, the comments eventually meandered. You willingly participated in those meanderings, and they started a long time ago, so why are you complaining now? And so what if the criticisms broadened to include Trump’s other flaws? They’re still valid criticisms and you willingly engaged them, though without success.
Your “Trump Derangement Syndrome” accusations backfired, and the only thing you succeeded at was in demonstrating that you are truly a member of the Trump personality cult, unable to brook any criticism of the Dear Leader even when you know the criticism is valid and you’re unable to refute it.
TSZ is a site for discussion and debate, so I discussed and debated. I don’t expect you and your fellow cult members to be swayed because your cult membership isn’t a rational thing to begin with. It’s deeply irrational and tribal, and rational argument won’t shake you out of it. However, it has been interesting to see the cognitive dissonance the discussion has induced in you. Your faith in the Dear Leader is being challenged, and you feel an obligation to defend him, but to your frustration, you can’t. The accusations are true, and you can’t rebut them. Instead, you are desperately trying to come up with excuses for not addressing them.
You’ve tried to dismiss the accusations as “spin” and “anecdote” gleaned from “suspect sources” and not worthy of a response. You’ve tried to tar your opponents as TDS-stricken propagandists who can simply be ignored. You’ve tried to change the subject to Biden and Harris. You’ve also played the “we’ll have to wait and see what history says about Trump” card, as if it were illegitimate to judge him based on what he’s doing right now. (You had no compunction about judging Biden while he was office, so why should Trump get a pass?). And now you’re trying to change the subject back to tariffs, except that instead of defending the Trump policy (which you can’t), you want to put the onus on us to provide “a better solution”. Dodge, dodge, deflect, deflect.
Regarding the “better solution” we’re supposed to provide: a better solution to what? Biden handed Trump an economy that The Economist called “The Envy of the World”. The “better solution” would have been for you and your fellow Trump voters not to put America in the hands of an orange doofus who doesn’t understand the economy and until recently didn’t even know how tariffs worked or who paid them, despite having promoted them for 40 years.
Holy shit. Trump actually thinks the Declaration of Independence has something to do with the Civil War:
Unbelievable. And this comes just a month or so after Trump botched a question about the Declaration of Independence in his interview with Terry Moran:
Trump:
[points to a copy of the Declaration of Independence on the wall]
Moran:
Trump:
Imagine how Republicans would have reacted if Obama or Biden had said anything remotely as stupid about the Declaration of Independence. Just imagine.
petrushka,
Hi Petrushka
Are the anti Trump arguments in this post persuasive to you?
Depends.
When people are dying in stupid wars, I cannot have much interest in taxes. I am a child of 1968, and have thoughts about intervention and nation building that no one here wants to talk about.
I tend to believe politics selects for unscrupulous people, so I can’t cheer for anyone.
I think England has exposed a facet of politicians that is more abhorrent than anything Trump has said or done. In fact, England at the moment makes me want to puke. Did I mention I was in protective services for seven years?
This site is a poster child for Dunnng Kruger. I’m aware that DK has been somewhat debunked, but yet it lives on in people who think they are smarter than Trump. None of them have gone up against an entrenched establishment and won.
As for most Trump policies, I’m not an enthusiast. I do hope we find out how a person acquires millions of dollars of net worth on a salary barely adequate to pay rent in DC. I’m thinking this is rather typical. I’m not thinking everyone needs to go to jail, but I would applaud exposure of how it’s done.
colewd, to petrushka:
Instead of looking for reassurance that it’s OK to support Trump, why not go down my list, item by item, and ask yourself:
Also ask yourself :
Remember, you haven’t been able to defend Trump against any of the items on the list. You are supporting a man who actually fits my description. Does that align with your values?
For instance, do you think a man who sexually assaults women and brags about it has the kind of character we need in a president? Are you OK with sexual assault as long as it’s the Dear Leader who is doing the assaulting?
Mostly I’m just a cynic. I have no solutions, so I mostly just complain. I think most solutions are counterproductive. But I’m not strongly opposed to them, because I have nothing better.
petrushka:
That literally made me laugh out loud. Of course I’m smarter than Trump. So are you and most of the people who comment here. Trump is a man who plugged tariffs for 40 years without understanding how they work. A man who thinks magnets don’t work underwater, that a dementia test is an IQ test, that Haitians are eating cats and dogs in Ohio, that he knows more about ISIS than the generals, that the Declaration of Independence is a declaration of “love, unity and respect” and that it had something to do with the Civil War. Who thinks he invented the word “equalize”, that the term “groceries” is antiquated, and that he’s revealing something to the American people when he explains what “groceries” means. He is a fountain of stupidity.
Of course we are smarter than he is.
That wasn’t because he’s smart. It’s because he’s very, very good at lying (to the gullible portion of the population (hi, Bill!), at least, who don’t see right through him). Lying is his means of propulsion through life. It puts opposing candidates, who actually have scruples, at a huge disadvantage. Combine Trump’s lack of conscience with his skill at lying and you have a formidable political figure who is able to command support from a large segment of the electorate despite being manifestly unfit for office.
I’m not interested in defending Trump’s character. Nor in speculating about the long term effects of his tax policies. Nor any of his policies, for that matter.
Forecasting political effects has a lot in common with science fiction. It’s pretty rare for predictions to come true, and then selective memory takes over.
You and I have different priorities. I really don’t give a shit about the issues you raise, and you don’t care about my issues.
Yet you keep doing it. You have all the signs of hyperpartisan hypocrisy: Always jump to defend Trump, always jump to bash Democrats, always go with Q/MAGA brainwash, and disregard all facts.
Latest example: When the Minnesota killer hit the news, you immediately likened him to “No King” protesters. In reality he is a Jan6er type. You have not acknowledged the reality. Your intake (and output here) is 100% Q/MAGA propaganda. Facts do not matter to you. Partisan blather is your bread and butter.
And now the pinnacle of it: Deny that you are doing what you keep doing.
This only half-describes you. Not only do you get everything wrong and have selective memory, you are also hostage to selective attention and your understanding of the world is hopelessly warped by partisan propaganda.
There is a difference between an issue like facts about tariffs and an issue like your personal failure to face the general realities of life. Nobody wants the latter to be the topic, but you keep forcing it.
keiths,
Your list is only relevant to the lazy label TDS crowd who buys into the anti Trump rhetoric as being real information. Do you think you could do a better job as President than Trump?
Says the guy who has had no information to share. “Lazy” describes you well.
In the beginning of this thread you started learning basic facts about international trade from scratch. It almost got to a point that you seemed to acknowledge a fact or two, but when it turned out that this makes God-King Trump look bad, you fell back to being lazy. For you it’s all about the ideology. Facts and information are to be dismissed as anti-Trump rhetoric.
The reality is that there is objectively not a single redeeming characteristic about Trump. If you think there is, name one, and get instantly laughed out. Or be as you were – lazy. Edit: Just now, Trump lost all the appeals in E.Jean Carroll’s defamation case. Trump is now permanently a civilly liable rapist. In the appeals Trump attempted to get DOJ (i.e. American taxpayer, yourself) to foot the bill of some over $80m for the rape and defamation damages, but this was denied. For a Christian it would be important to not defend a rapist, yet you think he is the Second Coming of Christ. Someone who cares about morals would not support a serial adulterer bankrupt con man pussy-grabber. Do you not care or do you not even know what morals are? It’s either of those two. You are giving a bad name to Christians (no worries, all American evangelicals are).
By the way, ever since the “No King” protests I’d say that Americans have begun protesting properly. You are living in a corrupt despotic police state right now. Don’t let it stay this way for too long.
Erik,
Hi Eric
I am an independent voter because I do not think either party has the moral high ground.
colewd:
The Dear Leader, whom you slavishly support, not only doesn’t occupy the moral high ground — he’s somewhere at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
Anyway, Erik’s question (his name ends in ‘k’, by the way) is about your morals. How do you reconcile your morals with your support of a man who (among his many other lovely characteristics) is a self-confessed serial sexual predator?
petrushka:
I don’t blame you. Defending Trump’s character is a losing proposition, as Bill has discovered. Whether or not you deign to defend it, though, I hope you recognize that a president’s character matters, and it matters a lot. Amoral leaders like Trump can do tremendous damage.
You don’t have to be a genius to see that it’s a bad idea to put a doofus in charge of economic policy — a guy with a 40-year tariff fetish who only learned this year that it’s Americans who will pay the tariffs, not China or anyone else. Who evidently still believes that bilateral trade deficits are subsidies, and that the size of a deficit equates to money lost by the US. Who is idiotic enough to say this to a reporter when asked about the traffic slowdown at US ports and the potential job losses among dockworkers and truckers:
That’s stupid on multiple levels. First, the numbers are wrong. Total trade volume with China was only $582 billion in 2024, and the goods trade deficit was only $295 billion. Second, even the corrected numbers have nothing to do with how much China “made”. You can’t determine the profits that Chinese companies made by looking at the trade figures. Third, a trade slowdown with China is not “a good thing”. It means that American consumers and businesses, both large and small, pay more for the stuff they get from China, if they can get it at all, plus exports to China are affected by the reciprocal tariffs that China imposes. These can be life or death issues for small businesses. Fourth, he still thinks that a trade deficit is money we are “losing”.
No one who is that stupid about economics has any business trying to run the American economy. When I hire someone to repair my car, I don’t pick someone who flunked his training and thinks inflating the tires is the way to solve battery issues. If I need surgery, I won’t be hiring the CNA down the street who says “You don’t need a doctor. I can handle this. I’ve worked in a hospital.” Why? It’s because I care about my health and my car. Why shouldn’t I care enough about the economy to want someone competent managing it?
You mentioned some years ago that you were in straitened circumstances. Hopefully that’s no longer the case, but either way, doesn’t the state of the economy matter to you? If not, OK, but it does matter to most of your fellow citizens, including me, so it makes perfect sense for us to critically examine the economic policies of our president.
Suit yourself. Policies affect the country, and I care about my country. Therefore I care about Trump’s policies and their likely outcomes. Your mileage may differ.
Whether or not we can predict exact policy outcomes, it’s obvious to me that when it comes to our leaders, we should prefer smart over stupid, honest over dishonest, knowledgeable over ignorant, and decent over amoral. Leaders have to make decisions in the face of uncertainty, so I don’t expect perfection, but it would be foolish to think that all proposed policies are equal or that it doesn’t matter who’s in charge. It’s also foolish to think that we are helpless to predict economic outcomes. Some policies (including Trump’s) are obviously stupid. An example I used earlier in the thread: if I propose privatizing all parking meters in the US in order to eliminate our trade deficits, no one will buy in. Why? Because they will be able to predict that the policy is stupid and will not achieve its objective. Should we take the colewd attitude of “let’s try it and see. Time will tell”? Should we shrug our shoulders and say “predictions are almost always wrong. Let’s give it a shot”?
Apparently, yes.
I don’t know which issues you mean, but if you were to do an OP, I would certainly weigh in with an opinion, or if not, I’d explain why I don’t have an opinion or why I regard the issue as unimportant.
colewd:
My list is also relevant to you, since it is forcing you to confront the fact that you cannot defend your Dear Leader. You still haven’t refuted even one item on it. That puts you in the awkward position of continuing to support the Dear Leader while staring at a (far from complete) list of all the reasons you shouldn’t be supporting him, none of which you can refute. Your cognitive dissonance is palpable.
How is that relevant? Let’s suppose I would be a terrible president, even worse than Trump. Would you argue “It’s OK to have a horrible president, because keiths would be even worse”? That makes no sense whatsoever. It’s like saying “My dentist is crap at brain surgery, but my gardener would be even worse, so I’m going with my dentist.”
keiths,
The majority in the electoral college has a choice who leads our country. That selection over two alternatives has been made. Again what purpose does your argument have at this point?
colewd:
Good point! That’s why you and your fellow cultists never criticized Biden while he was in office. The electoral college had already made its choice, so there was no point in criticizing him. Right? Lol.
Criticizing political leaders is normal in a democracy, Bill. Especially leaders as atrocious as Trump, though I’m sure he would suppress all criticism if he could get away with it. He’s already trying, which is one of the many atrocious things about him.
Given the political system in USA, “independent voter” is a pathetic rhetorical copout. In reality there is no such thing. In USA you vote either Republican or Democrat, because these are the only parties in Congress. Otherwise you are just voting blank or staying home.
Moreover, since you are a Trump supporter, very vocal at that, clearly morality does not factor into your choices at all. This is irrefutable given that you have nothing to say about Trump’s moral and intellectual character, his tanking of the economy against his promises, and his atrocious business record. Anything to say about the fact that he greenlighted the war between Israel and Iran? No thoughts or comments? Is it so that when there is nothing positive to say about Trump, then it must not be said? But pray tell, what positive is there to be said about Trump? That he was elected the president again? How is that positive by itself?
Look at his political record: Did he do 90 deals in 90 days as he promised? He even said at one point that he already made 200 tariff deals. He has been lying his head off and breaking all laws, international and domestic, including the constitution, yet it does not seem to concern you, so there is something else that you base your voting choices on. I suppose that if you put any thought into your voting choices at all (a HUGE assumption) then you go for the sleaziest bastard you can find, and as such Trump definitely hits the bullseye.
I vote the way my family asks me to vote, because I value my family more than I value the delusion that my vote would decide anything.
keiths,
I am fine with you and Eric expressing your views. My only point is that we are a long way from the next election and a lot can happen between now and 2028 to shape our views if we are open minded.
Eric
An independent voter means you will take a fresh look at the candidates vs voting straight party line each election.
Thank you for that. I’m doing okay. I have no cash, but am floating along. My entire net worth is tied up in a house that has been under contract for a couple of years. The whole block is supposedly going to be developed into condos. Commercial sales are the pits.
Almost everything I own was purchased used, so I am not sensitive to tariffs. I recently purchased some speaker repair parts directly from China, and the eBay price was ridiculously low, including shipping. Next door to free. I have also bought a few pieces of stereo equipment, ChiFi. I’ve been told not to use that term, but I think it has become complimentary rather than pejorative.
I think it’s on topic to mention that China assembles electronic components, but Texas Instruments owns the stereo amplifier chip industry. It is amusing to see amps being touted as high quality because they have TI chips. Prices have not yet gone up.
The pricing of second-hand goods is directly linked to the prices of the equivalent brand new products. If the price of a Chinese gadget goes up by 50%, before long the price of the same gadget second-hand will also go up (unless a replacement comes on the market for a lower new price).
This is why, for a period of time, after the pandemic, second hand cars were appreciating in value rather than depreciating, as is the normal trend.
petrushka:
Good.
Ugh. And since it’s under contract, you probably can’t borrow against it to give yourself some cash flow while you wait for the sale to finalize, right?
As faded_Glory noted, you’ll still be affected by tariffs even if you always buy used. The economic logic is this: Tariffed goods cost more new, which means that some people will choose (or be forced) to buy used instead of new. The increased demand for used drives up prices, and this happens even though the used goods in question weren’t under tariffs when they were purchased new.
I don’t recall ever seeing a political assassin disappear from the news so quickly.
Except maybe the dead kid.
petrushka:
Your vote may not decide anything, but it still counts. The only way your vote decides anything is if you’re the only one allowed to vote — in a system where you’re the dictator, for instance. But your vote does count. It gets included in the tally. That’s not to say that the system is fair. Far from it. The electoral college, for instance, is notoriously unfair with its disproportionate representation of states with small populations* and the winner-take-all rule that all but two states have adopted. But even under that system, your vote still counts. If individual votes didn’t count, then everyone could just stay home on election day and the result would be the same.
You say you vote the way your family asks because you value them, but shouldn’t they value you enough to let you vote the way your conscience dictates?
* I looked up the latest numbers and Wyoming gets one electoral vote per 196,000 people, while for California (where I live) it’s one per 731,000. My sister lives in Alaska, where the figure is one per 247,000. I always give her shit about the discrepancy at election time. On the other hand, my state goes along with the way I vote, and hers doesn’t, so the winner-take-all rule benefits me (locally, not nationally) but screws her.
colewd:
True, but that just means we should update our views as new information comes in. It doesn’t mean we should withhold judgment until then. Based on what we already know, Trump is a disaster as a human being and as a president. In the unlikely event that he has an epiphany, sprouts a conscience, and starts undoing all the damage he has caused, my opinion of him will shift upward.
Did you withhold judgment of Biden at the beginning of his term, saying “a lot can happen between now and 2024?” I don’t think so.
My criticisms of Trump are not premature. I am quite comfortable saying, for instance, that sexual assault is wrong, even when the Dear Leader does it. He’s done it a lot and has even bragged about it, and I don’t need to wait until 2028 to judge that as despicable.
If you can’t defend him against any of the charges in my list, why do you still support him? (That’s a rhetorical question. We all know why.) Why do you keep looking for excuses not to confront my list? (That’s another rhetorical question.)
colewd,
For days you’ve been hunting for excuses not to address the criticisms I’ve leveled at your Dear Leader. I thought it would be interesting to catalog those excuses over the ten days since I posted my list.
You characterized my list as:
anecdote (and ‘antidote’)
spin
coming from ‘suspect sources’
propaganda
bald assertions
a false narrative I’m driving
generalizations
no substance
partial truths
unbalanced
manipulation
I challenged you to back up the charges above, and you couldn’t point to even one item on my list that fit your descriptions.
You painted me as suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and being “unable to filter bias”. You couldn’t back that up either.
You tried to change the subject to Biden and Harris, and then to Biden’s pardons, even though our topic here is Trump, not Biden or Harris.
You wrote that “perfection has never been available to the voters”, as if I were criticizing Trump for merely not being perfect.
You wrote that my charges are “meaningless” “without an alternative choice”, which makes no sense. There was an alternative choice, even though you didn’t like her, and in any case, Trump’s flaws don’t vanish merely because he ran against someone you don’t like.
You argued that we should wait a few years and see how Trump is regarded historically, which also makes no sense (more on that in a later comment). Why should we wait? You didn’t wait with Biden. Why shouldn’t Trump be judged in the present, based on what he has done in his life up to this point, including as president?
You stated that Trump is the president, as if criticisms only matter when someone hasn’t yet been elected.
You complained that the subject broadened from tariffs to Trump’s overall deficiencies, as if that somehow invalidated the later criticisms. But why? Criticisms stand or fall based on their truth, not on whether they stick to the initial topic of a blog thread in which they appear.
You asked me if I could do a better job as president, as if that had anything to do with whether Trump is doing a good job.
You noted that the electoral college has already made its choice, as if the only possible reason to criticize a sitting president would be to influence an election that has already taken place. That didn’t stop you from criticizing Biden when he was the duly elected president, did it?
Now you are saying that the 2028 election is a long way off, and a lot can happen between now and then. True, but that’s no reason not to criticize a president based on his character and what he has already done. And again, “the election is a long way off” didn’t stop you from criticizing Biden, so why should Trump get a pass?
That’s a huge list. Isn’t it time for you to address my criticisms instead of making up more excuses not to?
Yes, but life isn’t fair.
What I find difficult to communicate is, I wouldn’t vote for Trump, regardless of my family’s wishes.
I don’t know how else to say this: I am more interested in the integrity of government than in any particular policy. I tend to to prefer having unpopular presidents, because they get more scrutiny.
I landed on this reading Jules Feiffer.
Cartoonist.
Screenwriter for Popeye, one of my favorite movies.
So I’m a little out of step.