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.
I had a medical emergency in New York. My son took me to the best hospital in Manhattan. I was admitted in a couple of minutes. No insurance.
Emergency surgery on Sunday night.
Was released and told I would be billed. 30,000. They offered payments of 300 a month, without interest. Remainder was forgiven after five years.
The ironic part is I qualified for VA insurance, but had never applied. I now have it. It pays 100 percent for emergency room treatment in any hospital.
Since I reached 65, I’ve had Medicare. Costs 400 a month for myself and wife. Everyone accepts it, no waiting list. 200 a year copay. My cataract surgery cost 200.
Where healthcare gets expensive is with chronic conditions involving expensive drugs.
There is something weird going on with dollar signs.
I think we know the answer. There are simply too many black voters, and kicking blacks out of the military would result in lost elections. But I’m convinced that Trump wants to get blacks (and women) out of the military. Right now, he only has enough authority to boot very high ranking blacks and women. Watching blacks and women get involuntarily retired deeper into the ranks will be an interesting metric.
Pretty clearly, the point is to increase viewership, which increases advertising rates, which increases profits. Erik has a point here – “news” outlets simply cannot afford to be honest or non-partisan. The viewing public would simply change the channel to something they want to hear.
petrushka:
It’s because dollar signs are the delimiters for LaTeX expressions. To get a dollar sign, type
They trigger Latex formatting. You can use $ to get “$”
Allan:
colewd:
You’re missing Allan’s point. He isn’t criticizing the fawning here (although he obviously disapproves of it). He’s criticizing you for ignoring stories — even purely factual ones — that come from outlets you’ve dubbed “heavy left-leaning”, especially since your criterion for “heavy left-leaning” seems to be merely “doesn’t fawn over Trump.”
It’s transparent well-poisoning. You’re looking for excuses to ignore any evidence that lays bare your Dear Leader’s flaws, so you impugn the source rather than disputing the evidence. You did it with the Washington Post, despite their public database of thousands of well-documented Trump lies. You’ve done it with me, too, asking whether I am a Democrat and whether I’ve recently voted for a Republican or independent. (That backfired on you, because I’m an independent who has indeed voted for a Republican recently.) But even if I had fit your desired profile, it wouldn’t have invalidated what I’m claiming about Trump, because the truth is the truth. He does in reality lie pathologically. The WaPo’s database isn’t fabricated, or it would have been torn to shreds by now.
I think Sean Hannity is a dishonest windbag, and his politics obviously don’t align with mine, but that doesn’t change the fact that when he says something that’s true, it’s true. Your focus should be on the truth, not on the ideological bent of the source.
“Maddow is constantly attacking Trump, therefore her attacks are false” is poor reasoning. Ditto for Hannity and Biden.
Truth is truth, Bill. That’s inconvenient for you, because I’m confronting you with the truth and you’re unable to defend Trump against it.
colewd,
And now, for the eighth time:
Was Trump right to pardon David Dempsey?
keiths:
Flint:
No doubt that’s management’s motive. Despite that, having conservative commentators on their panels is a good idea, in principle. I just wish they’d find someone better than Jennings and Singleton.
That appears to be a tall order. PBS has been positioning David Brooks as their conservative voice, but he is decidedly NOT pro-Trump. And a couple of times, I have seen Trump supporters on CNN, MSNBC, or PBS. And each time, the Trump supporter simply started shouting slogans, lies, and talking points nonstop and the host moderator couldn’t get in a word. Stephen Miller is I think the most skilled at doing this, but in any case, I would not say the audience was getting conservative commentary.
There was a Republican representative on a couple days ago “commenting” on Trump’s bill. And his position was that it doesn’t cut any services, that it won’t increase the national debt, that it benefits the working class, and that anyone who says otherwise is lying and spouting left-wing propaganda! The host pointed out that these claims were made by the Congressional Budget Office, and this Republican said this simply proves that the CBO is run by Democrats so you can’t trust anything they say.
Now, you can go to Fox News and get lots of conservative commentary, because everyone there agrees, just like MSNBC only has Democrats commenting and they all agree. Maybe you have someone in mind more conservative than Brooks and more insightful than Jennings.
keiths,
This is not my criteria. Left leaning is mostly based on policy.
colewd:
You base it on policy and criticism of Trump. How do I know? Because you dismissed my long list of Trump criticisms as left-wing spin from “suspect sources” without even knowing what my sources were. That’s a dead giveaway. I’m criticizing Trump, therefore my sources must be left-wing. It’s a ridiculous inference.
In any case, you’re ignoring the main point, which is that truth is truth regardless of who states it. Even if my sources were all left-wing (and they’re not), that wouldn’t be a basis for rejecting my claims. They stand or fall on their own, and you’ve been utterly unable to refute them.
Speaking of Trump’s lies, there were some doozies in his July 4th speech. Here are just two:
Regarding Hakeem Jeffries’ marathon speech before the final House vote on the BBB, Trump said:
Completely false. Jeffries’ speech was filled with direct criticisms of the bill.
Later, Trump said of the bill:
That’s a brazen lie. I haven’t seen a single poll in which the bill is even above water, let alone more popular than any other bill ever signed. It’s ludicrous. See this comment for the actual poll numbers.
Bill, can you bring yourself to acknowledge that those are outright lies? Take a few deep breaths, consult your conscience, and see if you can state the obvious. Or avoid the question, thus confirming once again that you are a member of a personality cult.
keiths,
All you are doing is criticising a candidate. You started with a policy discussion which I thought was interesting and then you diverted to random criticism with no consideration of the alternative choices.
Keiths
You need to find someone who thinks Trump is without personal faults to have the argument or discussion you want to have. I have no interest in defending Trump against your accusations it is simply a waste of time for me.
My interest is in policy and the ability to get useful policy implemented…hard stop.
Yes, entire mainland Europe has it. A key difference is that over here journalists are certified. It is a real profession. You know, like lawyers – unless you are certified (by a bar or whatever they call it) you are not a lawyer. You cannot be an uncertified lawyer, a hobby lawyer on the side or such. Similarly with journalists here.
There are qualifications that you must meet to get to be a journalist. Otherwise you are a “correspondent” or “(expert) commentator” and those are very distinctly set apart in news broadcasts.
But in America, any high-school dropout talking head like Alex Jones or Tim Pool gets to say “I am a journalist” and “I’m reporting”. The only qualification is that they have a room decorated like a studio. As to their content, it can literally be whatever slander and lies, still nobody takes their journalist title away from them – because the title is not given in the first place, it is only assumed and taken. Bluntly, journalism as a profession does not exist in USA.
Well, we have found you. You do not find a single fault with him. He is a convicted criminal, rapist and serial adulterer, he has no business or diplomatic skills (especially his “art of the deal” is conspicuously absent), and all this is just perfect according to you.
What are tariffs and what are they useful for? Especially Trump’s tariffs. His “Liberation Day” was April 2nd. Tariffs have improved what exactly? And without Trump’s tariff policy what exactly would be worse?
Also escaping the dollar sign works – type “\$”. Only the dollar sign will be displayed.
colewd:
No, I’m criticizing a president based on both his personal characteristics and his performance in office. Those aren’t separate, either. The former affects the latter and is entirely germane. A man whose character is so defective that he sexually assaults women and brags about it is not someone who can be trusted with the reins of government. A man who lies pathologically to the American people does not have the character to be president. He’s unfit.
Nothing random about it. Everything I’ve criticized is relevant to Trump’s performance as president, and there’s nothing odd about a thread that expands from a critique of Trump’s tariff policy into a critique of his performance in general. And don’t forget, you chose to participate. You chose to (attempt to) defend your Dear Leader against my criticisms, and it is only your failure that is now motivating you to object to the expansion of the thread topic.
I don’t need an “alternative choice” in order to know that sexual assault is wrong, that pathological lying is undesirable in a president, or that pardoning someone who batters police officers on your behalf is reprehensible and an abuse of power.
Likewise, I don’t need an alternative choice to know that Trump’s tariff policy is stupid and that it’s a bad idea to put an unintelligent man who doesn’t understand tariffs but is obsessed with them in charge of our country’s economic policy.
If someone asks you what you think of sexual assault, do you answer “Sometimes it’s a good thing, sometimes it’s bad. It all depends. What are the alternative choices?” Some things are just plain bad, Bill, and sexual assault is one of them.
In this entire thread, the only faults I can recall you acknowledging in your Dear Leader are that he has “caustic tendencies” and uses “hyperbolic language”. You even tried to soften the latter by saying that it “can be misrepresented as lying”, which is hilarious. What are these other “personal faults” you’re hinting at? Dare you mention them? If not, why not?
My previous comment presented you with two blatant lies from Trump’s July 4th speech. They are obviously and incontrovertibly false. Everyone including you can see that. I asked
You avoided the question. You have confirmed, once again, that you are a member of a personality cult.
You would if you could, but you can’t.
If you consider failure to be a waste of your time, then you are correct.
Trump has now told Kash Patel and Pam Bondi to cover up Epstein files. No more releases. Nothing to see here. Forget about it.
Partisan hypocrites always thought that there was a chain of pizza restaurants where leftist liberal commie elite pedophiles were eating children’s flesh and that Trump would be the Saviour and lock them all up.
Informed impartial observers know that the contents of Epstein’s notebooks and photo/video collection implicate Trump first and foremost. Trump is named and painted all over it. Less informed impartial observers as a minimum observe correctly who is doing the cover-up!
I find the Epstein phenomenon fascinating. In seven years in protective services I dealt with about a dozen sex abuse cases. I had about two dozen co-workers with similar caseloads.
No one was ever prosecuted. This tempers my speculations about what is going on with Epstein.
Whatever it is, it seems to be universal, affecting all countries.
Thank you.
keiths,
Yet the majority of independent voters disagree with you and if you are right we have an unfit President which means the non Trump loving voters were fooled. How did this happen and what do we do to change the system so this cannot happen again.
As a country we are sitting on 37 trillion in debt which was mostly accumulated over 4 Presidents 2 republican and 2 democrats. Your focused on one of them, and not mentioning the house and the senate yet it appears we do not have a person problem we have a system problem.
How did we get to this point over the last 25 years? I think the answer maybe mass corruption.
Journalism is the oldest profession.
keiths:
colewd:
It would help if people like you would stop getting sucked so deeply into personality cults that you can’t even acknowledge obvious truths about your cult leaders.
I know it’s painful for you to say negative things about the Dear Leader, and I know it would be a bridge too far to ask you to acknowledge that he’s a pathological liar, so how about just taking a baby step for now? I’ve presented you with two recent Trump lies:
Those are two lies. They aren’t ambiguous. They’re lies, and that’s incontrovertible. I’m not relying on left-wing sources. You can verify that they are lies by simply watching the videos of the two speeches and looking at the polling data. They are lies, period. That’s the reality.
Can you acknowledge that? See if you can coax your lips into forming the words “In his July 4th speech, Trump lied to the American people about Hakeem Jeffries and the popularity of the ‘big beautiful bill’.”
That’s all. Just take that tiny baby step for now. Give it a shot.
colewd:
You’ve repeatedly expressed concern about the national debt. Why then aren’t you criticizing the Dear Leader for pushing a bill through Congress that is going to add $3.3 trillion to that debt?
Yes, because he’s the one in office right now and he’s a terrible president.
The House and the Senate are screwed up too, but they aren’t the topic of this thread.
Explain to me how sexual assault, pathological lying, abuses of pardon power and all of the other things on my list don’t constitute a “person problem”.
keiths,
What is the cause of the person who you think is a big problem getting elected? He is our President and there is nothing we can do about it until 2029 when he leaves office.
What bad happened to our country based on his actions in the first year that was improved by the next administration? I think of more bad things that happened under Biden like high inflation, mass migration and multiple wars we had to support. There are real reasons beyond his personal faults that got him elected.
I would agree that we have not had good choices for this office so that is a system problem and not a single person problem.
That Trump is a rapist who knows nothing about tariffs is a person problem. That you elected him for president is a systemic problem, because (not an exhaustive list)
– You belong to a horde of low-information apologists of depravity and ineptitude who voted for him
– Trump, being additionally an insurrectionist and thief of government secrets, should not have made it to the ballot in the first place. The fact that he was on the ballot was already a constitutional crisis.
So, Trump has a person problem so severe that it became a constitutional problem, and the checks and balances in the system failed, indicating a systemic problem. Then you as an independent voter (“independent” apparently meaning completely devoid of facts and reason), made a conscious choice in your mind, “Yes, this is the guy and these are the problems that I will vote for to put in the highest office in the land” perpetuating all the listed problems.
You are part of the problem here in a big way, colewd. Such a tool you are. Edit: If you really want the problem fixed, fix yourself first.
Erik,
Well I might be part of the problem and its also possible you are focused on the wrong issues like debating faults of someone who will no longer be in office in the next 3.5 years without considering the alternative choices we had.
Have you ever had the responsibility of running a business? You appear to be unaware that the world of people with responsibilities is about choices and not ideals.
Trump’s business record is at least six bankruptcies. Most hilariously, he bankrupted all his casinos. The thing with casino business is that the house always wins. For Trump this was too complicated.
You conclude from this that Trump is exactly the perfect guy for office: Willing to take risk. And rapist and serial adulterer and closest friend of Epstein the pedo makes it all the more compelling!
I conclude: It is irresponsible to let that immoral idiot bastard near any post involving any responsibility ever. And by irresponsible I mean you, colewd.
You say that this is about choices, not ideals. Well, you have clearly made a less-than-ideal choice.
It may have been even less complicated than you think. As I recall, he bought into a business with a guaranteed return of about 10%, and he borrowed money at 15% to buy it. I imagine he was astonished that this lost money.
Erik,
The democratic Biden Harris 4 years was a train reck IMO so less than ideal was better than a train reck. Our government needs to heal from a pretty bad 25 year run. It will take time to fix.
BTW thank you for articulating the journalistic standards in Europe.
keiths:
colewd:
The problem is caused by people like you who voted for Trump despite the overwhelming evidence that he is unfit for the presidency. Your duty as a citizen was to cast your vote wisely, and you failed. You signed up for a personality cult instead of acting in the best interests of the country.
Here’s how severe the problem is. Above, I showed you indisputable proof of two of Trump’s blatant lies, asking you to acknowledge them. Just those two lies. Trump’s own words convict him; there’s no wiggle room. There’s no “maybe he did, maybe he didn’t”. He lied, it’s ironclad, you know it, and so does everyone else who is following this thread.
I asked you to acknowledge that simple truth, but you couldn’t do it. That’s how bad this is. You are so deep in the cult that you cannot acknowledge even a measly two of your Dear Leader’s lies, despite the fact that they’re unmistakable. The Dear Leader is more important to you than the truth itself. That’s pathetic.
You’ve tried to pretend that it’s all about policy for you:
That’s obviously false. If it were just about policy, you’d have no trouble acknowledging Trump’s faults. For instance, you’d say “Sure, he lies all the time, but I’m OK with that because I like his policies.” You don’t say that, because it isn’t just about policy for you. It’s about your irrational, emotional, tribal devotion to the Dear Leader and your consequent inability to acknowledge that he lied on July 4th. Just two indisputable lies, and you can’t even acknowledge those. That’s cult behavior.
keiths,
My interest is policy as I have see a 25 year train reck. You have done nothing to articulate that Harris would be a better choice as their administration may have been the worst 4 years in recent history given inflation, the border, wars etc. From a practical standpoint your argument has not been useful in discerning which choice was the best last November.
colewd:
…along with your perceived duties as a cult member who won’t permit himself to affirm even the most obvious, indisputable criticisms of his cult leader.
Because Harris isn’t the topic. Trump is. He’s a horrible person and a horrible president, and you’ve been unable to refute any of my criticisms despite having had an entire month to do so.
Changing the subject to Harris was an ineffective strategy the first time you tried it, and it will remain ineffective no matter how many times you recycle it. Give it a rest. Be brave. Defend your Dear Leader (or admit that you can’t) instead of changing the subject.
The election is over. Trump is in office due to the failure of you and your fellow Trump supporters. The question is no longer who we should vote for. It’s whether Trump is a good president, and the answer is a resounding no.
I’ve made that case, as have others in the thread. Prove us wrong. You won’t, because you can’t. And despite being unable to defend him, you will continue to support him because you are a loyal cult member. All while claiming that you’re an “independent” who is only interested in policy.
That’s the third time you have used “reck”.
If it were only once, I might have put it down as a typo. But with three times, it looks more as if you don’t know what you are talking about.
You are uncritically believing the propaganda. Try looking at the actual evidence.
Here is another litmus test. Once Trump was gone, the US was widely recognized as a world leader in dealing with the pandemic. By the end of his term, Biden’s economy was described as “the envy of the world” by the Economist and by Atlantic. But Fox news insisted all day, every day, that Biden did a terrible job with the pandemic, and that the US economy was in the toilet. Let’s all guess which news sources you listened to, and which you did not.
Over the last few decades, nobody will argue that things could not have been better, and that government policy was optimal in all ways. I suppose it’s a matter of personal ideology as to whether public safety net programs (entitlements, health insurance, etc.) were a Good Thing, or whether we should thank trickle down economics. But there is a reason why SCOTUS has such a dismal public approval rating after Dobbs and Citizens United. It wasn’t Biden who put those justices on the Court.
Trump, on April 9:
The Master Negotiator, whom everyone was begging for a deal. That didn’t age well.
On April 12, Peter Navarro made the “90 deals in 90 days” claim.
Then we have this, from Trump’s Time magazine interview on April 22:
Time:
Trump:
Time:
Trump, avoiding the question:
Time:
Trump:
[There are 195 countries in the world, lol.]
Time:
Trump:
Hilarious. The guy is such a dishonest dork. The actual number of deals at that point? Zero.
Fast forward to today. We’re one day shy of the 90-day deadline. The number of trade deals signed? Three, if you’re being generous — but those are only frameworks, so the true number is still zero.
Scott Bessent, in an interview with Dana Bash yesterday:
Bash:
Bessent:
Bash:
Bessent:
Bash:
Bessent:
Haha. We went from “they’re kissing my ass” to “many of these countries never even contacted us”. From “200 deals done” to “we’ll get 90 deals in 90 days” to “we have 3 deals done”, and that’s if you’re being generous.
You sure picked a winner, Bill. “You don’t negotiate like I negotiate.” The Art of the Deal, indeed.
I saw an article written before Trump was elected to anything, describing the art of the deal with Trump:
First, you agree to a deal, which lays out what you will do, when it will be done, and what you will be paid for it. You’re a small business that depends on this deal.
So, you perform the job you agreed to.
Next, Trump refuses to pay, so you have to go to court.
First, Trump’s lawyers argue that you never did the work. This calls for “discovery” showing that you did the work. Discovery is expensive.
Next, Trump’s lawyers claim you didn’t do the work well enough. More discovery, finding that you did the work very well.
Next, Trump’s lawyers claim you didn’t do what you agreed to do. More discovery, you did just what the deal called for.
Next. Trump’s lawyers claim you didn’t do it in a timely fashion. By this time, you have spent more than you’ll receive if you win, and so has Trump. But since you have gone broke, the legal games don’t continue.
Note that Trump has spent considerably more on legal fees than paying you for your work would have cost him. But he still considers this a win, because you clearly lost, so there must be a winner, which must be him. Trump habitually considered honoring the deals he signed as losing. You’d think small businesses wouldn’t agree to work for Trump, but apparently there’s no end to small or startup businesses who need the work and are willing to risk it.
Except if he is playing the same art of the deal with his lawyers also. Why would he pay his lawyers? He can find new lawyers, such as Alina Habba, who lost all cases for him. But even when Trump loses, he won’t pay up, and thus remains the winner. You think E.Jean Carroll has seen a penny of what the court ordered Trump to pay her?
Trump is always the winner. As petrushka says, “many people agree,” and colewd says “the majority of independent voters disagree with you.” There cannot be any other winner than Trump.
Neil Rickert,
‘
Train wreck :-). Thanks
This may or may not be propaganda but inflation is a publicly published number so are border crossings and we know we were involved in 2 wars.
Continually bashing one candidate like what has been done here is propaganda.
Yes, inflation is a publicly published number. That’s exactly how we know that Biden brought it under control. Border crossings have been going on forever.
And yes, we were involved in two wars — one started by Putin and one started by Hamas. Neither was started by Biden. And Trump has not been able to stop those wars, in spite of his campaign promise to do so.
Continually bashing one candidate is exactly what you have been doing.
Neil Rickert,
Has Keith and Eric been bashing Trump? Can we separate blatant personal attacks from our disagreement on policy.
-Inflation rose as a direct effect caused by Biden policies. When he reversed some of his supply restricting it did recover. But the inflation he caused is still with us.
-Your position on the border does not match the data as the crossings went up 4x over any other President and now are down over 90% which happened in less then 1 month after Trump came into office.
-I do not agree with your excuse for us being in 2 wars.
I’m not responsible for what they write.
That seems to be straight from the right wing propaganda.
Inflation started because of the pandemic.
When the economy is good, as it was under Biden, that attracts more border crossings. When the economy deteriorates, as it has under Trump, the USA becomes a less attractive place and border crossings go down.
Jesus said that we should welcome the stranger. Your antichristian cult says “deport”. Jesus said to feed the hungry. Trump’s budget cuts food support, and your antichristian cult is cheering him on. How can you claim the be Christian when you are so obviously antichristian?
Neil Rickert,
.
You are right that the right pushed this but it is true as his policies especially with energy restricted supply.
We have lots of data on this and the surge was based on management and not a good economy. If it was based on the economy the numbers would not have gone down so dramatically.
This I agree with this but we need boarders managed. 1 Million immigrants come in legally to our country every year. The debate should be about if we can manage a higher number and not blatantly open illegal crossings which is dangerous for those crossing.
I don’t know what that is about. I’m not aware of any energy shortages during the Biden years.
Sigh!.
Boarders are people living in boarding houses, or perhaps college students living in dormitories.
colewd:
Stop saying true things about Trump! That's propaganda, and it makes me uncomfortable.
What we need is balance. For every bad thing you say about our Supreme and Very Orange Leader, say something good. I know, I know. In that case, just make something up. We need balance.
There are lots of good things to say about Hitler and the 9/11 hijackers, but when was the last time you heard the Radical Left Lunatics at the failing MSDNC Fake News Network mention any of those? All they do is bash, bash, bash. It’s propaganda.
<proceeds to bash Biden some more>
colewd,
Since you value balance, I’m sure you’ve said a lot of negative things about Trump in this thread. Could you point those out?
I know you said he has “caustic tendencies”, which is a pretty devastating criticism. It shows how objective you are. Likewise, Scientologists acknowledge that L Ron Hubbard cussed a lot. They say something negative about their leader and are therefore not cult members.
But what else have you said? You made a half-hearted attempt with “uses hyperbolic language”, but then you spoiled it by adding “which can be misrepresented as lying”.
But come to think of it, you do have a point. When Trump said he had 200 trade deals in the bag, he wasn’t actually lying. He did have a number of trade deals signed — it’s just that the number was zero. 200 is only a slight exaggeration. It isn’t a lie, it’s just hyperbolic language.
OK, so what else have you said about the DL that’s negative, Mr. It’s-All-About-Balance?
One of the creepiest aspects of the Trump cult is that some people actually see him as a father figure:
The White House is even pushing it:
Ick. Absolute cringe.
ETA: Bonus — the first video features an appearance by Kandiss “globes, globes, globes” Taylor.
keiths,
I said a few which you pointed out. I missed your criticism of Biden or Harris
. 🙂
keiths:
colewd:
“A few”? I pointed out two, and they were the mildest criticisms imaginable: “He can be caustic, and he exaggerates at times — but that isn’t lying!”
When I showed you these, you couldn’t admit that they were lies. A measly pair of lies, blatantly false, independently verifiable, and even then you couldn’t admit that Trump lied. If Trump claimed that the sun rises in the west, would you have trouble saying “No, he’s wrong about that”?
You also missed my criticism of Grover Cleveland, the Vienna Philharmonic, and Wile E. Coyote. Why? Because they, along with Biden and Harris, are not the topic of this thread.
Talking about them wouldn’t help you, anyway. “Sexual assault and pathological lying are OK because I don’t like Kamala Harris” is not a persuasive argument.
keiths,
The topic of the thread is Trump tariffs and that ship sailed long ago 🙂
Financial Times is nice – they don’t say chicken or TACO.
The markets just don’t believe Trump on tariffs https://www.ft.com/content/e7967944-f6c1-4929-bdf7-631e23470bdd
Erik:
On the same topic:
I wonder if at some point the humiliation will become too much for him and he’ll plow ahead despite the economic consequences.