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 disagree. Most people vote tribally. There are a few floating voters in the middle who decide elections, plus however many tribal voters can be bothered to show up from the broader population of those who might. I suspect immigrants and resentment of ‘wokery’ played a larger part than economics in 2024. And Trump lied without restraint. Most people have more integrity, but the voters bought it.
Allan:
I think that’s key. People aren’t necessarily more gullible than they were in the past, but they also weren’t bombarded with lies the way Trump has bombarded them. A level of gullibility that was tolerable previously becomes deadly when someone like Trump exploits it.
keiths,
Lying politicians is a cliché, but Trump has elevated it to high art. It’s as if that becomes part of his charm.
Good analysis here. Polls consistently tell us that most voters would not switch party no matter what. If a candidate is particularly repulsive, voters of that tribe simply stay home. I wouldn’t phrase it as “the voters bought it” – they simply didn’t stay home in enough numbers. Where I live, Democrats contest no offices other than President and Senator – the ballot is simply a list of Republicans running for every position (and Democratic candidates for President and Senator lose overwhelmingly anyway). This is the Deep South, and perceived stand on race is decisive. Democrats are seen as tolerant of, uh, negroes in politics – or any position of importance or high salary – and that’s not much short of treason in these parts.
I consider it important that Fox News has more viewers than all other news channels combined, yet Fox is pure propaganda with no more respect for truth than Trump. The implication is that voters are not so much gulled into swallowing lies, as much as they are more comfortable with an alternate reality that strokes their prejudices.
Allan:
Tony Schwartz, who ghostwrote The Art of the Deal, says this about Trump:
From a 2019 CBS News article:
Schwartz, in 2016:
keiths,
We had similar with Johnson. He lied effortlessly, but he was a ‘character’, so got away with it. “Oh, that’s just Boris”.
I do think these people are wired differently.
It is a very old trick. The Nazis are a prime example of honing it to perfection (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie), but they were certainly not the first, nor will Trump be the last.
There is something in human psychology that makes many (most? all?) people inclined to believe what they want to hear, instead of basing their beliefs on rational analysis of data. It appears to be extremely hard to overcome this tendency and follow reason rather than gut feel.
On the other hand, if nobody had this inclination what would be the need for Internet forums 😉
ETA I’m struggling again with the board software. This time I tried to include a link, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie
I used a BBCode style guide that suggested [url=https://www.phpbb.com/]Visit phpBB![/url]. That doesn’t work. Replacing the square backets with carets also doesn’t work: Visit phpBB!
Funnily enough, just including the link address does produce the link, but I don’t know how to make it show as anything else but the full web address. I was aiming at highlighting the word Nazis so that clicking on it would open the link, without showing the technical stuff. I don’t know how to on this board.
There is also something in human psychology, particularly in the psychology of ordinary working people, that since I am doing my everyday tasks in routine professional mode with due honesty and decent results, then probably pretty much everyone else does too, particularly those higher up because how else did they get so much higher up.
The reality is of course that success is not always (perhaps even not nearly often enough) merit-based, but based on nepotism, corruption, and thirst for power. And Trump is the embodiment of that: zero professional skills (and total delusion about his own abilities), but he is quite good at attracting people who enjoy getting away with corruption and vices.
Learn HTML.
Thanks Erik, but I thought that this site uses BBCode rather than HTML?
I have seen people allege confidently many times over the years that BBCode is supposed to work here somehow, but this cannot have any basis in reality, because the quote buttons always only produced HTML for me in all browsers I tried (and I am the champion of browsers, always using half a dozen of them in parallel).
Follow whatever the quote buttons present you with.
dazz,
Hi Dazz
Clinton eventually balanced the budget. He was the last to do it.
So I guess he eventually balanced the sheets after massively overspending in his first term, but fair enough. Let’s see what Wikipedia has to say about how Clinton went about achieving that:
So Trump’s plan is to do the polar opposite of what Clinton did (tank the economy, raise inflation, slash corporate taxes) and your reaction is to say “hey, maybe that will work great!”. Right, let’s try a global experiment based on some version of the Austrian school of economics in hopes that it will not end in disaster. Great idea!
Unbelievable.
You probably missed it but I reported earlier that the Quote in Reply and Reply buttons don’t do anything on my system (Firefox on Win11 PC).
Until you have not tried at least one Chrome-ite browser, and HTML besides BBCode, you have not tried enough.
dazz,
Trumps plan is to increase supply which should help with inflation. Until I see the budget I have no idea if his plan will do anything to help right the ship.
Clintons debt was about 5.6 trillion when he left office. We have added 32 trillion since.
https://www.investopedia.com/us-national-debt-by-year-7499291
No, he has no plan to increase supply. He just hopes the private sector will somehow find a way to increase production or even start producing the stuff tariffs will make expensive to import. Wishful thinking is not a plan.
dazz,
Deregulation increases supply. New factory foreign investment in the US increases supply.
Higher prices shrink domestic demand and at the same time trade war nukes export opportunities. So even if the supply increases (it won’t), there is nobody to consume it.
You stopped having a sensible argument roughly after your second post in this thread.
Erik,
Hi Eric
You have made your prediction now we can see how it goes. Early signs seem to indicate your prediction maybe 100% off.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/oil-prices-set-weekly-loss-potential-more-global-supply-2025-04-25/
If you are talking about my previous post, then this headline confirms what I said. In the context of oil, they are predicting *oversupplies* which is in line with what I said. This discussion is waaaayyy over your head!
Hi Eric
From the article:
“
”
The article is anticipating production hikes. You previously stated supply will not increase. Maybe you can clarify your position.
Imports are about 12% of US GDP. How do anticipate this will kill the consumer?
Exports are around 11% of US GDP.
US consumers are getting tax breaks from tips and overtime. Government revenue will go up based on tariffs.
Have you thought about all these issues in your model?
It doesn’t. Certainly not of consumables. The article says “unlikely in the short term due to the continued trade war among top global consumers”. Do you know what trade war is?
Now, it also says, “OPEC+ may accelerate production [of oil] from June” but somehow you are missing:
1. OPEC is not USA. In previous discussion you expected USA to get its manufacturing etc back.
2. Oil is not manufacturing.
It kills for example affordable computers and smartphones. Advanced chips are produced in basically just one country, and it’s not USA.
Home-grown agriculture is already shrinking. It survived on government subsidies. These people will go into the unemployed sector https://moneywise.com/news/economy/americas-farmers-voted-for-trump-in-big-numbers-but-now-they-feel-the-pain-of-his-shutdown-of-usaid-which-buys-2-billionyear-of-products-from-them-where-do-they-go
Yeah and DOGE checks will make everybody rich 😆 You still falsely maintain that tariffs go into government revenue. No. Tariffs *block* trade. There will be no trade. As your article says: TRADE WAR! Historically trade wars precede real wars.
Clearly you haven’t.
Erik,
Are you aware that Trump has reduced drilling restrictions?
Are you aware TSMC has production in the US and is currently planning to expand that production?
All these people? Us farming and farming related GDP is 1.5 trillion. Revenue loss is less than 1%.
Can we add new wars to your 2025 predictions 🙂
Are you aware that you are making my points for me?
Meanwhile, what do you predict? Trump got everything wrong. Did not lower the price of eggs (or any other price for that matter, quite the opposite). Did not end Ukraine war. Instead of free speech, he has ended the last semblance of judicial due process and rule of law, and is enforcing fascism.
I’d like to be generous and assume that you do not know what you are defending. But I think I’d be mistaken. It is more likely that you know very well that you are defending fascism and you are religiously proud of it.
And, same as you, Trump does not know what tariffs are. All billionaires in his circle are against tariffs. Why are they against tariffs, what do you think? Are they stupid or something? Unaware how the world economy can be better?
Once Trump becomes erratic and dangerous enough for them, they will take him out. Trump’s power is not as great as you think. He wanted to get rid of Jerome Powell, but Trump is likelier to go first.
Erik,
I am a wait and see if we make progress on budget deficit that is meaningful. I do not think the tariffs after they are negotiated will have a large effect.
I am hopeful that we will end the wars. I do not think a war will erupt over the tariffs.
I think the World economic forum and other globalist organisations will lose most of their power.
I think the Democratic Party will remain neutered until they find a leader with a reasonable agenda. I personally hope they do sooner rather than later as we need more viable parties as you have stated.
I think the extreme dislike of Trump is more emotional than practical although I sympathise with those offended by his style.
I think the media is corrupt on both sides of the isle and they are fuelling the great political divide we are dealing with.
I think global political systems are generally corrupt and downsizing all governments is healthy for all of us.
From “Men in Black”: Bugs.
Bugs feed on war and conflict. News media feed on clicks. Readers are the product. Bad news gets more clicks than good or happy news. Unless it involves cats.
Scary politics gets more votes than calm politics.
This is true regardless of the nominal system.
colewd,
This is just “TDS” more politely put. It used to be possible to just despise someone and everything they stood for, now it’s a ‘syndrome’, which is simply an attempt to deflect.
I make no bones about the fact that I dislike the man. Always have, ever since The Apprentice aired on UK TV. He is the worst kind of American: what you’d get if you asked AI to generate an animated avatar including all their bad traits and none of the good. It never ceases to amaze me that Christians don’t appear to have any issues with them. He’s 100% “our guy”, with all that gag-inducing slop of evangelists clustered round the desk. But hey, I’m an atheist; I’m not here to judge… (but see also Matthew 6:1-6)
All that said, my opinions on his presidency, and his character, are rationally argued. “TDS” is an attempt to deflect and delegitimise criticism.
Crime and ignorance is now “style”?
It is not in dispute that Trump is an insurrectionist and should not be in office. It is not in dispute that he is absolutely illiterate when it comes to economics. And you personally like the fascist “style”.
And the corruptest of them all is the right man for the job? And the “style” to do it is to rip up all existing treaties and make your neighbours enemies? Oh dear.
AP: Trump says high tariffs may have prevented the Great Depression. History says different
This
The guy is an utter scumbag who clearly enjoys bullying and hurting people but this is all hunky-dory because he is going to reduce government spending?!? I don’t buy that.
It makes sense from the religious cult perspective. The real point that justifies everything that Trump does is not that he might reduce government spending (or his immigration attitude) but that he is God-King signalling Christ’s second coming. They are outright worshipping Trump and of course the one you worship can do no wrong. (Possibly his impune serial adultery and rapism helps too.)
What is more puzzling is how ostensibly secular Trumpites have the same irrational worship behaviour even directly against their own personal survival. See Trump-voting farmers, paupers relying on food stamps or government employees who should know the social/human value of government programmes and sound administration.
This can only be explained by Soviet/Nazi level of brainwashedness in USA. And I take this point very seriously. Namely, in Nazi Germany and in Stalin’s Soviet Union there was no daily worship ritual of the leader of the country for schoolchildren. There definitely were such rituals that resulted in brainwashing at least half of the population into the delusions of primacy of their nation over others, but it was not *daily* for every schoolchild. In USA there is such a daily ritual for every child: Pledge of allegiance.
Trump did an interview with Time magazine a few days ago. It’s classic Trump: he has trouble forming English sentences, struggles to maintain a train of thought, and lies his way through the entire interview.
Some quotes relevant to this thread:
Trump:
He still doesn’t understand that trade deficits are not losses. I buy groceries from the local supermarket, and they buy nothing from me. I’m running a trade deficit with them, equal to the dollar amount of what I buy. Am I losing money? No. Is it unsustainable? No. Does someone need to come along and stop it? No.
Besides getting the concept wrong, he lies about the numbers. The US trade deficit is $918 billion — less than half of what he states.
Trump:
Time pushes back:
Trump:
Time:
Trump:
Bill, do you think that Trump (of all people) understands the economy better than the Atlanta Fed?
Trump:
No. The rate of inflation that he “inherited” was about the same as it is today.
They don’t think what he’s doing is right. They “privately warned him that his tariff and trade policy could disrupt supply chains, raise prices and empty shelves, according to sources familiar with the meeting.” They think his policy is a disaster.
Trump backed himself into a corner when pressed on the lack of trade deals so far:
Time:
Trump:
Time:
Trump:
Time:
Trump:
There are 195 countries in the world. Trump wants us to believe that he’s made 200 trade deals without announcing a single one. Bill, do you believe that Trump has made 200 deals?
Time:
Trump:
Time:
Trump:
He couldn’t name a single one.
Time:
Trump:
Finished? Without announcing a single one? If they’re finished, why not announce them? We actually have a deal with China, and no one on either side has bothered to mention it? And we’re finished, so there are no ongoing negotiations? This guy is absolutely pitiful.
Time:
Trump:
Haha. Nice backtrack.
Time:
Trump:
Word salad. Trump has been caught in a lie and is squirming. This is why interviews are so much better than press conferences, provided that the interviewer is good and doesn’t let Trump change the subject.
Trump comes up with a brilliant metaphor:
Um, okaaaay…
Too funny.
That quote is really interesting, because it suggests that someone (maybe Bessent) has tried to explain to Trump that trade deficits aren’t losses, but the lesson hasn’t stuck. He’s still clueless.
Time:
Trump:
“Governor” Trudeau wasn’t unable to give an answer — he was unable to dumb it down enough that Trump could grasp it.
We aren’t subsidizing Canada, and in any case Trump has inflated the numbers yet again. The actual trade deficit is $35.7 billion. Trump is overstating it by more than 5x.
If Trump wanted to equalise trade, he could just embargo over-quota imports. But then, of course, he’d be cutting off some of the raw materials that go into exports, throttling them back. So to equalise, he’d have to throttle imports some some more. And then… the ideal: zero in, zero out, no-one’s ripping you off, America’s doing great…
It’s all a bit Sorceror’s Apprentice.
Erik,
IMO you and others are a victim of the corrupt media and have no idea of what is real and what is not. I hope if I am right and you turn out to be 100% wrong you will learn something here about political reality. If I am wrong and you are right I hope I will learn something.
I personally also have issues with Trumps style, along with his choice not to balance the budget and did not vote for him in 2020. In 2024 based on the Biden disaster I did not have a choice.
And you’re the spokesman for what is real? This is some next-level cope. Don’t you think people here have advanced any rational objections to his policies – trade, foreign relations, the judiciary, rule of law, the politics of vengeance? We’re all just media-led automata?
You mean you are incapable of trusting your own eyes when you see high crimes committed in broad daylight, such as the insurrection in Jan 6, 2021.
You have missed all learning opportunities. You trust Trump over your own eyes, so we do not share the same universe epistemically.
Did you notice that Trump stated in the Time magazine interview that he has done 200 tariff deals? Do I need to spell it out to you that Trump stated an obvious lie that should make you doubt him? The reality is ZERO deals.
But of course nothing makes you doubt him. If Trump says he made 200 tariff deals, then in your mind this makes Trump an even bigger superhero for you and justifies tariffs entirely and you do not trust anything or anybody else, least of all some pesky facts.
Allan Miller,
Hi Allan
Most of the arguments I have heard so far are from the anti Trump echo chamber. We will see if the echo chamber is right or not but in my experience the echo chamber has been consistently wrong in the past ie the Russia hoax.
colewd,
The Russia “hoax”? ROTFLMFAO! Trump is obviously acting like Putin’s bitch, but it was all a hoax. Yeah, right. XD
colewd:
If you had bothered to investigate, you’d know that the Mueller report didn’t exonerate Trump. He’s lying when he claims that it did. You got suckered again.
Oh, the irony.
You’re making excuses. Whether an argument is valid is independent of the source. It stands or falls on its own. It’s fine for you to be skeptical, but why not actually examine our arguments to see whether they hold up to scrutiny, instead of dismissing them merely because we have a low opinion of Trump? If you think they’re wrong, why not offer counterarguments instead of making excuses for not addressing them? (That’s a rhetorical question. It’s clear that you don’t have cogent counterarguments. If you did, you would have presented them by now.)
You’ve been dodging my questions, and it’s not hard to see why. Trump has made all of the following claims, and they are all wrong. Can you defend them?
1. Bilateral trade deficits are subsidies.
2. They indicate that we are being cheated.
3. Achieving trade balance with every partner should be our goal.
4. Tariffs are a tax on foreign countries.
5. A tariff is a tax that “doesn’t affect our country”.
6. “Tariffs don’t cause inflation, they cause success.”
7. The CEOs of Home Depot, Walmart and Target all think that what Trump is doing is “exactly right.”
Also, do you actually believe Trump is telling the truth when he claims to have made 200 trade deals?
I’d also like to hear your thoughts on this, from the Time magazine interview:
Time:
Trump:
He’s lying. It was not said in jest. He repeated it throughout the campaign, and he was completely serious. For instance, here he is during the CNN town hall with Kaitlan Collins:
His words, his tone of voice, and his facial expressions all confirm that he was dead serious.
He’s a blowhard who made a promise he couldn’t keep. He failed miserably, and now he’s lying in order to cover up his failure. Do you see how pathetic that is, Bill? Why would you support a guy like that?
Anything anybody says against Trump is inherently ‘anti-Trump’. You are simply sealing your mind against any possibility of grasping a criticism, for such criticism must inevitably come from the ‘anti-Trump echo chamber’ and can be summarily dismissed. There are no criticisms from anywhere else – certainly not from the pro-Trump cult, who rationalise his every idiocy and adopt his every thought as their own.
The media are manipulating us by broadcasting Trump’s own words? Come off it, man. I hate to say it – because it is equally unpersuasive to its target – but you are in a cult.
It’s also a logically fallacious – “if they were wrong about Russia, they’re wrong about everything”.
Very true, Allan. And it’s so ironic as well, because the only reason one could believe it was all a hoax is if they’re in the MAGA echo chamber. He probably believes it’s been proven to be a hoax, so much so that even leftists/liberals know it. Reminds me of antivaxers and their ubiquitous “I told you so, now what?”
I will take your “issues with Trumps style” as a tacit admission that you regard him an unpleasant personality too, so kudos for that. Since I always try to keep my comments positive, I will also commend you on at least writing down the possibility of being wrong. I hope that you will follow up and also consider the possibility that you yourself may be receiving somewhat biased news reports. Incidentally, did your media sources mention the Trump administration crippling science by prohibiting federal agencies to use certain terms, like “woman”, “gender”, “hate speech”, “climate science” and “bird flu”? Here at TSZ pro-ID supporters (like you) always made a big deal out of some perceived mainstream bias against Intelligent Design research. Will you admit that researchers in the USA are now confronted with outright censorship by the government? Is this something you have voted for?
Corneel,
Hi Corneel
I will for sure as I have been wrong before. I was wrong about Clinton in the past until I examined in detail his record on the economy.
It is very hard to find real news these days. Keiths is trying to argue with original sources like interviews and I think he is doing the best he can. He, however, has fallen into the anti Trump echo chamber from his unbalanced comments and has become a walking logical fallacy machine with simply a barrage of ad hominem attacks.
I agree Trump has issues on the other hand he also has strengths especially when you look at the candidate choices we have had. He wants to stop the wars. Does anyone disagree with this in principal?
Well, I think that few people will object to peace, provided it is a fair peace. Do you believe the current “peace proposal” will guarantee a fair peace or do you think it is rewarding a violation of international law, is a vile betrayal of Ukraine and the European allies and comes with a nice topping of extortion of the victim?
By the way, you seemed to have missed my questions regarding state censorship of US scientists. How very odd for someone that previously cared so deeply about academic freedom.
colewd,
Where would one go for a ‘balanced’, non-echo-chamber view of Trump, do you think? Fox?
(The channel, not Alan)
Do you agree that Armistice was a fair peace that prevented future wars? How about the end of WWII? Korea? Vietnam? Iraq? Israel? Afghanistan?
Has England given up Northern Ireland?
Just curious.
There is no voice of God. Figuring out what is going on requires work and judgement. And acceptance that at best, you are guessing.
It would be interesting to have a discussion site where people took its motto seriously.