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.
colewd:
I have been criticizing both the person and his policies. It matters whether a president is honest or dishonest, decent or immoral, intelligent or stupid, shrewd or gullible, mature or juvenile. Trump is dishonest, immoral, stupid, gullible, and juvenile, and I can back up those accusations.
Please do! I’ve been asking you for over two weeks to point out the weaknesses in my arguments, but you keep making excuses not to. And no, labeling an argument “TDS” or “propaganda” or “a bald assertion” is not pointing out a weakness in it — unless you can back up your accusations, which you can’t. Ironically, it’s only your own weaknesses that you’re pointing out when you throw out lazy labels like “TDS”.
No, your claim has been that the criticisms are false. Prove it.
petrushka:
Is that addressed to me? I haven’t made any claims about how this will play out.
My criticisms have been specific: 1) Trump recklessly and irresponsibly ignored what his intelligence community was telling him, claiming without evidence that they were “wrong”; and 2) he risked (and continues to risk) the lives of Bolton and Pompeo, who are targets of Iran, by revoking their security details.
Trump, yesterday:
“Everyone knows it”? Apparently the Defense Intelligence Agency didn’t get the memo:
U.S. initial damage report: Iran nuclear program set back by months, not obliterated
I don’t know if the DIA report is correct, or how confident they are in their assessment, but I can confidently say this: Trump will not be happy.
keiths,
There are lots of people who want the force regime change in Iran.
petrushka:
True, but how does that relate to my comment?
The immediate effect of the US American bombing has been to demonstrate to the world that governments of the western world are complete hypocrites when it comes to upholding international law. My prediction is that authoritarian regimes like those in Russia and China will exploit this attitude to justify their own violations of international law and human rights.
But to justify military action, it needs to be an imminent threat. Does Iran have nuclear weapons at its disposal at this moment and was it preparing to launch an attack on the USA or Israel? If the answer to both questions cannot be proven to be “yes” then the bombings by both countries were a violation of international law.
This is “weapons of mass destruction” all over again.
I firmly believe that a long-term solution to the conflict in the Middle-East cannot be achieved through brute military force but requires a diplomatic solution. That is why we need to respect international law and human rights. So, do you condone violations of international law?
Yes, and many people have been telling you this is not what they understand an ad hominem argument to be. Using the phrase in an inappropriate way makes your comments look sloppy and poorly thought through. That’s why people have been advising you to either learn to use it in the proper way or dropping it altogether.
Suit yourself though
Corneel,
I do not believe international law is real given it is rarely enforced. Look at October 7 attack on Israel. What did the international courts do? Also Iran was clearly a nuclear threat given the amount of money they had spend of developing their capability.
https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_2f23d00d-1216-42da-884f-f3c7d341bd10
If memory serves, the International Criminal Court issued a search warrant against Hamas commander Mohammed Deif, together with the warrant against Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant.
I repeat, even if this was proven to be true (and it hasn’t been), this would not suffice. It needed to be proven that Iran was planning an imminent nuclear attack on Israel.
But I am glad that you’ve stopped pretending that the USA were not violating international law and have conceded that you just don’t care for it. As I said in my comment above to Petrushka, authoritarian regimes like Russia and China will be very pleased with this gift.
Corneel,
I think the head of Nato disagrees with you.
https://x.com/IngrahamAngle/status/1937862280378462417
colewd,
You may know that Mark Rutte has been prime minister in my country for 14 years 🙂
His “greasing” skills make him well suited to be the Secretary General of NATO, but he is not always entirely truthful. I think he is just saying those things to mollify your head of state.
ETA: fix mistake
Corneel:
A lot of people have learned that the way to play Trump is via flattery. You just have to grit your teeth and hope that all the intelligent people realize that you don’t really mean it and that you’re just buttering Trump up.
Pakistan really laid it on thick with their nomination of Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize based on his supposed role in facilitating the India-Pakistan ceasefire. India denies that Trump played any such role.
What’s hilarious is that one day after nominating Trump, Pakistan condemned him for the strike on Iran, calling it a violation of international law.
colewd,
Do you recognize how pitiful it is that you won’t even condemn your Dear Leader for sexual assault? That all you’re willing to do is criticize his “style”?
You tried to dismiss my criticisms based on the fact that a lot of people voted for him, so I asked:
Would you?
Are you so abjectly servile that you won’t even criticize Trump for that?
Speaking of hypocrites, do you really believe this is the first time the US has bombed countries without a declaration of war? Ask Gaddafi.
I mean, really.
From the NYT:
I haven’t seen a single news report criticizing the performance of the pilots, much less “betraying” them. By all accounts that I’ve seen, they placed the bombs exactly where they were supposed to go. If the damage was less than hoped for, it’s not their fault, and I haven’t seen anyone blaming them.
This administration is so dishonest that they are trying to twist legitimate reporting of a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment into criticism of the pilots. (Trump and Karoline Leavitt both did this.) Not only didn’t news organizations blame the pilots, they were also careful (at least in all of the reporting I saw) to note that the DIA assessment was preliminary and that we are still early in the intelligence-gathering phase.
Tulsi Gabbard got into the act, criticizing the “propaganda media” for publishing stories about the DIA assessment. In reality, news organizations did exactly what they are supposed to: report the news. The DIA assessment was the first available assessment of the damage to Iran’s nuclear program, and it would have been irresponsible of news organizations not to report on it.
But “propaganda media” is right in line with Trump’s “fake news” label, so I’m sure Tulsi will get a pat on the head from the Dear Leader.
I commented earlier about how Trump claimed over 53 times that he would end the Russia-Ukraine war as president-elect or within 24 hours of inauguration. He later tried to pass those claims off as being “in jest”, since he obviously failed (and has continued to fail) to end the war.
He’s still lying about it. From yesterday’s NATO press conference:
Reporter:
Trump:
Of course it wasn’t. I wish a reporter would call him on it.
Iran is lamenting the lack of support from Russia and China.
Things are spookily quiet.
Almost as if everyone wanted Iran to be put out of the nuke business, but no one was willing to take responsibility. I’m not inclined to obsess over conspiracy theories, but this whole thing looks choreographed. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are under the table agreements to stabilize the Middle East.
Nor surprised if there aren’t.
But the oil kingdoms are getting wealthy and westernized, and I can’t see them wanting endless war.
keiths,
What is your basis for thinking the sexual assault charge is real?
Unless I am gravely mistaken, Gaddafi is dead. And yes, I am aware of the bombings during the Libyan revolt. I even believe military actions in Libya were on the initiative of France and the UK, not the US.
As before, I am at a loss what point you are trying to make. Is it “we did it before, so now everytime we do it, it is OK” or “it has always been this way, so it is pointless to make a fuss about it” or perhaps “stuff your international law: we bomb countries whenever we like”. You’ll have to elaborate a little.
Whatever your point is: I don’t see why the fact that (illegal) military actions have occurred before somehow would prevent us from speaking out against contemporary ones. We want to make things better, do we not?
colewd:
He bragged about sexually assaulting women.
He was found in court to have sexually assaulted a woman.
At least 25 women have publicly offered accounts of his predatory behavior.
It’s completely in line with his character.
He lies pathologically, so his denials carry no force.
What is your basis for thinking he’s not a sexual predator, other than “He’s my Dear Leader”?
keiths,
The case was not criminal and wealthy men can easily be exploited. A long gap between the event and the case being brought.
Your other claims like lying pathologically are not credible given what I know about people who know him and are not politically aligned with him. He does use hyperbolic language which can be misrepresented as lying. You have a similar tendency to make more of certain pieces of evidence than is appropriate to analysing the overall picture. Your defence of common descent is an example IMO.
I accept the possibility of being wrong, but I believe most of the world wanted Iran’s nuclear program destroyed, and I think it was. Come back in three months and crow about me being wrong. I’m seriously wondering if a large faction in Iran didn’t want this over and done with.
I believe most of the Gulf countries want the endless war to end. Most of them are on the path to being first world and on the path to having modern, diversified economies.
Some sort of settlement is in the works. Russia and China are not objecting. Something very historic could happen.
Or not. Come back and laugh at me if I’m wrong.
Heh, it appears that “mollify” was not strong enough a word for the full-on suck-up that Mark Rutte launched at Trump during the NATO summit. And Trump clearly enjoyed having Rutte up his arse as he reposted a flattering private text message on his social media network. The whole situation led to reactions in the media ranging from hilarity to embarrassment.
Corneel,
How much of your perception of the world is shaped by believing the media is credible?
petrushka,
I think you are right that many people are very happy to see an end to Iran’s nuclear program and to see its awful regime overthrown (and I am one of them). And I also hope that the Middle-East will finally have a more peaceful period ahead of it. It’s just that I do not believe that military force is the way to obtain it. The only sustainable solution is through diplomatic means and to achieve that there needs to be mutual trust. This is why it is important to honor the international agreements.
I wasn’t planning on that. First, I respect you. And secondly, I never blame people for being wrong, only for being unwilling to change their mind.
What a strange question. Some news outlets are more trustworthy than others and none are infallible. But you need to get your news from somewhere, right?
Best to consult several different sources and use your common sense, I say.
Corneel,
I agree.
Do you agree media sarcasm is not a very strong support to any claim?
I know people and sources that I trust to be honest, but none that I trust to be correct all the time. For most things, I have a three day rule. What is being said after three days.
For big things, like the aftermath of wars, I have a thirty year rule.
I have been wrong about many things, but the biggest thing I’ve changed my mind about is solar panels. I did not think they were cost effective, and did not think battery technology was ready, but that is changing almost as I speak. Five years, and solar will be the clear winner wherever there is sufficient sunlight.
It´s called satire and you are very wrong about it. It is incredibly powerful as a persuasive tool because it very efficiently exposes the shortcomings of the subject 😉
I don’t like military force either. I’m a veteran, but I was drafted. I hated most of it. I would have hated all of it, but I lucked into the most elite electronics school in the country. That was actually fun.
The one thing about the Iran war is, it was stopped short of regime change. That was a deliberate decision. They could easily have been toppled. It makes the future more stable. But they are unlikely to regain their ability to cause trouble. I’m guessing on this, but a lot of people agree.
I hope you are right, because I had eight of them installed on my roof last week. I will never be able to earn them back, but hey someone’s got to save the planet.
Well, I hope you are right about that as well.
colewd:
keiths:
colewd:
And we all know that in civil cases, the juries never, ever determine the truth, regardless of the strength of the evidence. Right?
True. Just look at Harvey Weinstein. He was certainly expl… um… never mind. Don’t look at Harvey Weinstein.
Yeah, and it’s not as if she told her friends about the attack at the time, or that they testified about it at the trial. Oh, wait…
The Dear Leader is not a liar! When he says he grabs women by the pussy, I believe him. How dare you accuse him of lying!
You crack me up, Bill.
colewd:
Trump’s false or misleading claims total 30,573 over 4 years
And that was just his first term. It’s pathological lying, Bill.
Let the Wookie win. Or let him say he won.
I have no idea how things will go, but I have a guiding principle in international relations. If you have nuclear weapons, or imply you can have them, you should be careful with your rhetoric, and perhaps tone down your calls for exterminating your neighbors.
A short and quick way to understand whatever Petrushka says is that it’s just words. There is no point. If you are trying to make sense of it as if he had a point, you are overinterpreting.
Then again, there is “stuff” in what he says. In this instance, he starts with “Speaking of hypocrites” making it sound as if he has a point to make about hypocrites. Normally, in the universe normal people live in, hypocrisy would be considered bad, immoral. However, petrushka does not inhabit the normal universe. He ends up saying that this is not the first time USA has bombed other countries without a declaration of war. So, he is quite straightforwardly saying that USA is the hypocrite, and has been hypocrite before.
This is such a bizarre “point” to make that you perforce want to think that he is making a different, some rational point. But no, he is not. He is indeed saying that USA is the hypocrite. Moreover, in his mind this *is* a rational point, because – get this – he is making an American domestic hypocritical hyperpartisan point. Namely, Obama, a Dem president, was in charge of taking down Gaddafi/Libya. Petrushka’s point is: See, a Dem president did it too! and in American mind this definitely counts as a point.
In conclusion, Petrushka has successfully demonstrated that he himself is the hypocrite. He is making, for a thousandth time on this forum, a hypocritical hyperpartisan point. Among Americans, to be fair, this is regular behaviour. In USA you must side either with the Democrats or with the Republicans, and the Republican shtick is to justify everything with “Dems do it too”. And Republicans frankly extrapolate this to absolutely every little issue and they project it to everybody in the world. You as a European have no American partisan bone to pick, but in Petrushka’s mind you necessarily do. If you criticise Trump, then you have to be an Obama puppet because this is how Petrushka’s world works.
If you do not side with Trump, then you are a Democrat puppet, and there is no third way, such as that you are not an American and you do not view anything with American partisan goggles. This is the “point” that he made. Yup, there was no point.
Everything petrushka says here is factually false. This includes the last sentence – petrushka is spewing the talking points of his fav talk shows without stopping to digest and fact-check. He does no thinking of his own, so there is no “guessing” involved.
Claim: The one thing about the Iran war is, it was stopped short of regime change. That was a deliberate decision. Fact: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114729009239087163
Claim: [Iran] could easily have been toppled. It makes the future more stable. Fact: USA stated the same thing when attacking Afghanistan and Iraq. This is relevant because it is the exact same region, Afghanistan and Iraq being Iran’s immediate neighbours. The result is that “the future” (which is now) is so much less stable that Iran is the next target.
Claim: But they are unlikely to regain their ability to cause trouble. Fact: American “bunker buster” bombs were aimed at three nuclear enrichment targets in Iran, the main one of these being so deep that the bombs likely had no effect on it. There has been no nuclear leak detected after the bombings, so the bombings only did superficial damage. And, of course, Iran was causing no trouble worth mentioning, except responding to Israel’s attacks.
Yet again petrushka has shown that he hates facts with passion. But I assume that it is not quite his own passion. He unthinkingly regurgitates what his fav talking heads are saying, i.e. it is more about self-imposed wilful ignorance.
I have some praise for you: It is nice of you to make it very explicitly plain and clear that you accept no evidence whatsoever 😀
Yet the evidence is overwhelming. To add to everything that keiths cited:
For over two decades Trump made sexual assault his everyday main business! He owned Miss Universe and his behaviour at the pageants, such as surprise-touring the contestants’ clothing rooms, is in *hours of video* if you care. But why would you care – this is a fact on video, which is no different from any other fact, therefore it can be disregarded just like you do with all facts.
Also on video is his more than a decade of close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein (how are those Epstein files coming along, by the way?). He was practically neighbours with Epstein (certainly in terms of throwing regular parties for each other) both in NY and in Palm Beach. And you know what business Epstein was in, don’t you? Trump was in the same business, except with a thin legal veneer. Trump and Epstein were both neighbours, friends, and business partners. You have your qualms about Bill Clinton and Bill Gates featuring in Epstein’s “Lolita Express” flight logs, but somehow you manage to have no qualms about Trump featuring there also.
Can you at least give Trump’s famous Playboy interview a read, will you? All those decades ago you could have learned, from the horse’s mouth, the character of who you worship unquestioningly, but you keep postponing it.
Must be great being a billionaire- men and women alike attracted to the power. The women – well, “when you’re a star, they let you do it”. The men, meanwhile, a short step away from offering their wives up as concubines.
On a separate note, had a nice chat in a Scottish pub with a Texan lady. She and her husband, the only Dems in town, looking for an ‘exit strategy’. He had her remove face ID from her phone, so they couldn’t wave it in her face at Immigration to gain access.
I’ve been to America maybe a dozen times, including for 6 months in ’23. Everyone I met was charming, interested and welcoming, in contrast to the belligerent MAGAs who seem to dominate the online space. No plans to visit any time soon. Which will suit the aforementioned – my Limey, libtard ass will be heading to Canada instead, and good riddance to me.
keiths,
Do you believe the Washington post without question? Objective journalism is hard to find and in general biased journalism is the norm.
Why is there a tendency over time for Trump to gain respect especially from people who previously did not like him like Joe Rogan?
There is a reason he won the popular vote.
colewd,
Sure. People turn a blind eye, and are impressed by wealth. And, his opponent was a black(ish) woman, and many would boil their own testicles rather than vote Democrat. The statistic says nothing about his character or the wisdom of a single one of his policies.
[eta – Clinton 2016 and Biden 2020 both won the popular vote. Presumably, “for a reason”. Does this statistic validate them or their policies?].
I find it interesting that the democrats are even more unpopular.
Coalitions of dispirit minorities seem to be fracturing.
keiths:
colewd:
Without question? Of course not, but I’ve seen them describe Trump’s lies, including via their ‘Pinocchio’ system, and those descriptions have checked out against the facts. The lies they’ve flagged are from Trump’s public statements, and they are listed in meticulous detail in a public database along with analyses. Do you seriously think the WaPo has been fabricating thousands of these? And then publishing the data so that anyone can see their fabrications? Where are all the headlines?
WaPo Editor Resigns Over ‘Pinocchio’ Affair
Washington Post Fabricates Thousands of Trump ‘Lies’
Journalistic Scandal at the Washington Post
Pinocchiogate Leaves Post’s Reputation in Tatters
You’ve seen no such headlines because the WaPo’s reporting of Trump’s lies has been accurate. And it’s not as if they’re a lone voice in the wilderness. Trump’s lies have been (and are being) widely reported by many different news outlets.
Plus, I don’t need those reports to know that Trump is a pathological liar, because I have personally seen him lie again and again, shamelessly. Far more than any politician in my lifetime.
These aren’t inconsequential little lies, either. Here’s just one example of a big lie: On Thursday he claimed that if the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ doesn’t pass, taxes will increase by 68%:
He’s been repeating that lie for at least a month. Here he is on May 30th:
The actual number? An average of about 7.5%. And it’s not as if Democrats actually want taxes to increase on poor and middle class people. Their proposal was to extend the Trump tax cuts for anyone making less than $400,000 per year. Under their plan, the tax increase would only affect the wealthy.
Trump is lying because he knows how unpopular his bill is and he wants to manipulate people into supporting it. He lies to you when he thinks it’s to his advantage. He doesn’t respect you enough to tell you the truth.
The Mother of All Lies that Trump has told is, of course, the claim that he won the 2020 election. He says there’s “massive evidence” that it was stolen, and that “everyone” knows it, which are two more lies.
colewd:
What tendency? Trump hasn’t been gaining respect. Look at his approval ratings. Look at what people think about his ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, his Iran attacks, his ICE raids, his tariffs.
Even the guy you picked as an example — Joe Rogan — has lost respect for Trump. Rogan called Trump’s fight with Canada “the dumbest fucking feud.” He described non-criminals being sent to El Salvadoran prisons as “horrific”. He criticized Trump for campaigning on no wars but then attacking Iran six months into his term. He described ICE raids on places like Home Depot as “fucking nuts.” Not a lot of respect in those statements.
Yes, and it’s not because he isn’t a pathological liar. The facts speak for themselves. And as Allan points out, Clinton and Biden won the popular vote. Does that invalidate all of your accusations and criticisms of them?
Look, I know you’re desperate for ways to defend the Dear Leader. This thread has been a disaster for you, and you’re latching on to any defense you can think of, hoping that something will stick. But why not pause for a second before saying something and ask “Does this argument undercut my own position? Am I employing a double standard?”
We get it already. You’re a member of the Trump cult, with an irrational and embarrassing inability to acknowledge the flaws of the Dear Leader, no matter how blatant and incontrovertible they are. You’re one of the many unthinking sheep in the MAGA flock. We get it. You don’t have to keep rubbing our faces in it.
We get it, but you don’t. What you need to do is look in the mirror and ask yourself “Do I really want to be the kind of person who supports a guy like Trump?”
As I say, multiple factors. The assassination attempt,, the widespread belief 2020 was ‘stolen”, the court case, all fed into a maverick hero narrative. Then there’s the pendulum effect, Biden stepping aside late, Harris’s gender and ethnicity, too many potential Dems staying home…
keiths,
A couple of lies:
In Scotland recently, I was given a ride by a South African brother and sister. They urged me to visit, and ignore all the ‘white genocide’ crap peddled by Musk and Trump. They were appalled by the ambush of Ramaphosa in the Oval Office, the symbolic memorial to all deaths portrayed as actual white graves, the use of footage shot in the Congo as if it were SA.
The amusing footnote to the ‘white genocide’ story being the attempt to fiddle with Musk”s Grok, which led to it bringing white genocide up in random, unrelated answers.
The other lie that catches my attention: “Garcia has MS13 actually tattooed on his knuckles”. We’ve done this one before, I think; it is hilarious how Trump kept going with that one against Moran’s attempts to ‘agree to disagree’. And I note that the White House has subsequently called successfully for Moran to be sacked. ABC had that right, but under the First, I think the WH was wholly wrong in calling for it.
Allan,
I’m not sure we can call it a lie, technically, since Trump actually seemed to believe it. It’s mind-boggling, but it appears that the President of the United States is truly stupid enough to think that the photo was unaltered. For anyone who hasn’t seen the clip:
Trump and the nonexistent ‘MS13’ tattoo
Here’s the actual image.
If he had been lying intentionally, I think he would have been happy to let Moran move on to the next question. Instead, he kept drawing attention back to something that made him look like a complete idiot.
He later posted this clip of Eric Swalwell grilling Kristi Noem over the image, asking her if it was doctored. She refused to answer the question.
I don’t know if Trump thought that the clip somehow vindicated him, or whether he was just proud of how Noem debased herself on his behalf, but either way, he put the focus back on his comical inability to recognize an obviously photoshopped image.
Trump cut the clip short. Here’s the full video of Noem’s debasement:
‘My BullSh*t Detector Says…’: Kristi Noem Brutally Grilled Over Abrego Garcia’s Pic Pushed By Trump
Regarding the ‘white genocide’ claims, I do think Trump knows that he’s lying about that, but I can’t be sure. It’s an interesting thing about this president: when he says something controversial, the question that usually arises isn’t “Is that true?” Instead, the question is “Is he being dishonest, or is he really that stupid?”
A question I was pondering the other day: Can you think of any world leader who is dumber than Trump? There are almost 200 countries in the world, so maybe there’s one out there, but the ones I’m familiar with are all obviously smarter than Trump.
Bolsonaro might have given Trump a run for his money, but he’s out of office. Any other contenders?
Trump is definitely lying intentionally. The psychological explanation of it is that he is unable to distinguish between lie and truth. As you see in this discussion with petrushka and colewd, Trump has taught his followers that facts do not matter. What matters is that you say “many people believe” whatever is convenient for the moment’s partisan self-adulating purposes. And everything not aligned with this shall be labelled “propaganda” or TDS and dismissed. Trump embodies this attitude with such “success” that his followers seek to emulate it.
Moreover, as a life-long career tabloid celeb businessman, everything Trump says is proactive forward-looking speech act i.e. he is building aircastles. He strongly believes (and his career justifies the belief) that his words have truth-making or truth-creating capacity: Whatever he says *becomes* truth when *he* as a rich white man, superior to lower-class people, superior to “low-IQ individuals”, superior to “fake news reporters”, basically superior to everybody else, says it.
Additionally, he has spent his life in courts (somebody on Wikipedia has counted that Trump has been through more than 4000 court cases in his life) and in courts what you are supposed to do is deny deny deny and bamboozle the judge, so that even if you end up with the guilty verdict it’s milder than warranted. It is fully intentional lying.
Erik:
Aren’t those sentences contradictory? Lying is by definition intentional, but if Trump can’t tell the difference between truth and lies, then he is never knowingly making false statements and therefore never lying.
I think there’s no question that Trump deliberately lies when he thinks it’s to his advantage. He does it again and again, more frequently than any politician I’ve ever seen (except maybe for George Santos), which is why I regard him as a pathological liar. Stephanie Grisham, his former press secretary, said:
Other examples of deliberate lying are those videos I linked to earlier in the thread where he tried to bluff his way through questions about his reading habits and couldn’t name a single Bible verse despite claiming that the Bible was his “favorite book”. His excuse? “It’s very personal.”
That’s not to say that he doesn’t sometimes begin to believe his own lies or fall victim to his own repetition, but the lying is clearly deliberate at first.
I suspect he sees people who refuse to lie as “losers” and “suckers”, which is how he regards people who have died for their country. I’ve seen no evidence that he has a conscience, and you don’t rack up more than 30,000 false statements over four years unless you’re a liar and an ethical bottom-dweller.
However, there are also clearly times when he makes false statements unintentionally, simply because he’s an idiot. He’s bad at thinking, a slow learner, and he doesn’t read, so he’s prone to saying stupid things.
Sometimes it’s obvious whether a statement of his is due to intentional dishonesty vs unintenional stupidity, and at other times it’s hard to tell. But there are definitely instances where it’s unintentional stupidity, as when he insisted that he invented the word ‘equalize’ and when he ran around telling people about the word ‘groceries’ as if everyone else didn’t already know what it meant. Those were clearly instances of unintentional stupidity, because they didn’t benefit him in any way. They just made him look moronic.