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,
Allan Miller,
The article title starts with a subjective statement of an extreme result. The backing of the statement continued with biased assertions.
If you and I bet 1000 pounds if this statement came out to be true there would be no way to determine the winner.
The article like most ignores the condition that Biden left Trump to clean up such as an open border for four years with 2 million illegal crossings per year.
keiths,
Now you have convinced me that single country deficits can also be important if they are large enough and especially if they persist over time.
For a moment I thought you would back up your assertions. Of course you won’t ever. My bad.
So you (and Trump) determine economic policy by betting, not by knowledge of economics. Well, this is exactly the problem everybody has been pointing out. To contribute meaningfully to the discussion, it would be preferable for you to know something about economy, at least for example by finding relevant analogies from the past, because tariffs are not an entirely new thing. Everybody knows how they worked out in the past, but you think betting will change the odds somehow.
Immigration has nothing to do with tariffs. Earlier you also said “Russia hoax” as if that somehow provided support for Trump’s tariff policy. It doesn’t. Bringing in unrelated issues – factually false at that – only confirms that you don’t know what you are talking about and don’t care to know either. Rather, your goal is to tear the discussion down to your level where logic, expertise and factuality have no role.
Do you consider insider trading to be lawless?
colewd,
That’s not a left-or-right thing. As predicted, you just see anything critical of Trump as “left-wing bias”. But a Republican (outside the MAGA cult) could just as readily make that statement.
There are no ‘biased assertions’. He really has done all those things. Name something he is accused of there that he has not in fact done.
“Left-leaning bias” is not evidenced by things not in the article.
Allan Miller,
I will try to find an article with right leaning bias which it will be easier for you to see. This article has no substance and it is possible you cannot see it because you have not lived here through the years of lawlessness in our cities caused by Soros backed DA’s and Mayors plus the additional crimes caused by gang members crossing our borders.
The problems Trump was given to solve were extremely difficult. None of that is mentioned in the article which says to me the Guardian is a dishonest source. The exporting of criminal illegal aliens was a campaign promise of his.
Here is a right of center article that has similar bias of omission as the Guardian article has.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/us-tariffs-could-cost-china-5-10-million-jobs-onus-beijing-bessent-says
petrushka,
I consider this trivial vs gang members and terrorists freely crossing our borders for the last 4 years.
Because identifying left leaning bias in the actual article would be too hard?
That context is irrelevant. Are you saying this justifies his fascistic actions?
Oh, good grief. Conspiracism rears its head.
So he busied himself with undermining the judiciary, releasing cop-beaters, extracting vengeance on law firms that crossed him, threatening free speech, introducing economically illiterate tariff policy, threatening to annex neighbours, pissing off half the world…
Not having its head up Trump’s arse tells you it is a ‘dishonest source’. Sometimes, a 3rd party can give some insight.
So was being a dictator. Due process. It used to be a thing.
Allan Miller,
Since you cannot see the bias in Alan’s article you have no idea that what you are saying is mostly misleading.
I have thought TDS was simply a label until our discussion 🙂
Were you ok with the Biden Presidency?
I can’t get my breath!
Bill’s thread at Peaceful Science
Alan Fox,
Alan were you ok with the Biden Presidency?
colewd,
You know I live in France, I think. Anyway, whatever his failings, and I’ve mentioned
his disastrous treatment of Anita Hill that resulted in Clarence Thomas becoming a member of the US Supreme Court, and his failure to stand by his promise to be a one-term president that resulted in Trump’s return to the presidency, he (and those he relied on) at least respected the rule of law.
Alan Fox,
The reality is he did not.
Allowing illegal border crossing and defying a Supreme Court decision on student debt were examples.
It is unclear to me if local judges should be able to overrule an executive order by the President. In one of the cases the Supreme Court overruled a local judge based on standing.
Myself I am not wild about executive orders as they can and have created instability. I think Congress making the laws is a better process.
Are you referring to US v. Texas?
Can you support this claim with facts? A quick Google leads me to cast doubt on you being able to.
I hope you are not slipping back into Sealion mode, Bill.
Alan Fox,
https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_17015080-8ee5-4058-8824-3c9b13c3dd11
He pursued other legal avenues after the court said he could not forgive debt. Trump has used the same tactics.
Alan. Can you define Sea Lion based on your understanding. I will try to refrain.
Trump apparently thinks that polls are elections, so polls that he does not like are election fraud.
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114414863742664682
Any comments, Bill? (I know, it will be something about “complicated” and “nuanced” because your grasp of abstract concepts is even more limited than Trump’s…)
Alan Fox,
I am talking about policy that increased illegal crossings from 500k to 2 million plus per year. His policies promoted illegal crossings. This is IMO the most egregious and immoral act of any President I am aware of.
The results were murdered Americans, massive human trafficking and synthetic drug death from overdose.
This is the problem Trump promised the American people he would clean up and he has in his first 100 days. Biden lied and claimed he did not have the power to do it.
colewd:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
Add to the constant ducking from evidence and facts his use of AI instead of sources and you get… surely there is a term for this by now.
keiths,
Based on Wiki is Alan being a sea lion here if he continues requests like this?
Your answer was a fail.
Your claim was that Biden defied a Supreme Court decision on student debt.
Alan Fox asked you to back it up, so you gave an AI response where your question is “Did Biden attempt to cancel student debt despite the Supreme Court decision.” Notice that *defy* is missing. (And AI is stupid, so I will entirely disregard its contents.)
The facts are that after Biden’s first attempt under HEROES Act, which grants the secretary of education power to waive or modify federal student loan provisions in a national emergency (namely Covid), was struck down by the Supreme Court, he started another process under Higher Education Act, which grants the secretary of education the same right under slower procedures (because it does not invoke emergency).
Conclusion: Biden applied the law. When blocked from applying one law by the Supreme Court, he started the process to apply another existing law. He did not defy the Supreme Court ruling. Nothing even remotely resembling Trump’s behaviour.
And you are wrong on the border crossings also.
keiths:
colewd:
You convinced yourself, and you got it wrong. What matters is the difference between all of the trade deficits summed together and all of the trade surpluses summed together. If imports equal exports, the aggregate trade deficit is zero, regardless of how big the deficits are.
In my toy example, the US runs a $15 million trade deficit with Malawi and a $15 million trade surplus with Portugal. $15 million minus $15 million gives an aggregate trade deficit of zero.
Now suppose that the trade volume is 100 times larger while maintaining the same proportions. OMG! The trade deficit with Malawi is now $1.5 billion! It’s a catastrophe, right? Slap some tariffs on those cheaters!
But is it really a problem? Sure, the trade deficit with Malawi is now 100 times bigger, but so is the trade surplus with Portugal. $1.5 billion minus $1.5 billion gives an aggregate trade deficit of zero.
Should we panic now that the trade deficit has “increased” from zero to zero?
What matters isn’t the size of the bilateral trade deficits. It’s the size of the difference between the sum of the trade deficits and the sum of the trade surpluses. A bilateral trade deficit with Malawi, regardless of size, only matters to the extent that it isn’t balanced by trade surpluses elsewhere.
In my fictional world, suppose President Frump sees the large trade deficit with Malawi and slaps an exorbitant tariff on Malawian mangoes in order to drive the bilateral trade deficit to zero. His move is profoundly stupid. The Malawians aren’t cheating us, so there’s no reason to punish them. We aren’t subsidizing them; the money we’re giving them isn’t free — for every $100 we give them, they give us $100 worth of mangoes. And the US aggregate trade deficit is zero, so that isn’t a problem either. All Frump is accomplishing is antagonizing the Malawians and increasing the price Americans pay for our mangoes. It’s lose-lose.
Erik,
I agree this is what he did.
Trade deficits in the aggregate is only part of the problem. A large trade deficit with one country is also a problem as that country then holds the ability to purchase your long term appreciating assets.
Negative trade balance with China around 3 trillion over the last 10 years.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/chn/china/trade-balance-deficit
Slightly more than a mango exchange 🙂
Yet you are utterly incapable of identifying anything that is “left-leaning bias”, beyond the bare fact that it is critical of The Great Leader.
TDS is a lazy-arsed label used by people incapable of making an actual case. Things getting hot? Say TDS! That’ll show ’em…
Incidentally, Grok is often impressive, but does not know who is President:
Allan Miller,
The whole article is left wing bias as it does not address Trumps challenges Biden left him.
I agree it is a lazy label.
Today’s Amazon kerfuffle is a good illustration of Trump’s (lack of) character. He’s incensed that someone might tell Americans the truth about his disastrous tariffs. He’s abusing his presidential power and meddling in a decision that should be up to Amazon and no one else. And he’s vastly underestimating the intelligence of Americans (those who aren’t in the Trump cult, anyway) who will know damn well who is responsible when prices go up and shelves are empty.
colewd:
Foreign investment is generally a good thing, not something to be avoided. It stimulates the economy and decreases the cost of servicing the national debt. And if you’re concerned about the leverage that China gains through its US investments and bond purchases, there are other ways to limit investment without starting a trade war and screwing American consumers.
If your concern is Chinese investment, why support a doofus who is imposing a 47% tariff on Madagascar, of all places? What does that accomplish? You should be in support of a policy that addresses China directly without alienating the rest of the world, making them distrust the US, and motivating them to seek closer ties with China, making China stronger and America weaker. And one that doesn’t jack up prices on American consumers and drain their retirement accounts.
colewd:
Allan Miller,
That does not make the case at all. “But Joe Biden…”. Biden’s actions justify none of Trump’s in relation to tariff policy, due process, vengeance, the independence of the judiciary, the pardoning of insurgents, the punishment of free speech…
The true TDS is exhibited by those who regard all criticism of their patron saint as “left wing bias”.
A CNN reporter heard this from a White House official regarding Trump’s reaction to the Amazon news:
Um, because like any other business, Amazon is not eager to lose money in order to shelter the dipshit in the White House from the consequences of his poor economic decision-making.
The statement also confirms that Trump understands (finally) that the tariffs are not a tax on foreign countries. They’re a tax on Americans and American companies.
Scott Bessent trying to cover up Donald Trump’s lie about having made 200 trade deals already:
“I believe he is referring to sub-deals…”
Lol.
From a CBS News article today:
And:
And:
And:
And:
keiths,
Amazon folded, though. Bezos was one of the Three Oligarchs flanking Trump on his inauguration, something I found pretty hard to stomach.
DHL are reporting added import duties. Presumably they have to collect (this is the case with VAT in the UK).
Allan:
Yeah, they folded on the issue of showing tariff markups on their site, which is disgraceful. However, I have a hard time imagining that even a bootlicker like Jeff Bezos would agree to absorb the cost of the tariffs without passing any of it on to consumers (and I doubt that it would even be possible for Amazon to absorb the costs, given the enormous sales volumes and the exorbitant tariff rates on China). Prices will go up, consumers will notice, and Trump will rightfully be blamed by all but the diehard MAGA cultists.
And if that weren’t nauseating enough, Amazon also donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. And during the campaign, we had Bezos interfering with the Washington Post’s editorial policy and preventing them from making a presidential endorsement. He’s a piece of work.
Who needs left wing bias when you’ve got his own stupidity to go with?
His speech cadences are those of a child. “You’re not being very nice”. “They treated us very badly”. “Bad people”. That’s just TDS of course, a dislike of manner; anyone not afflicted would find that a great, great way of speaking. The best way of speaking, nobody speaks better.
But much worse, he thought the actual characters ‘MS13’ were tattooed on the guy’s fingers…
Allan:
That was hilarious. The interviewer was trying to help Trump out, first by explaining that those characters were photoshopped onto the image and then by trying to move on to the next topic, but Trump would not let go. He spent an excruciating minute and thirty seconds insisting that those characters were actually tattoos.
For anyone who hasn’t seen it, here is the image. Click on it to enlarge, and you’ll see what we mean.
Then ponder the fact that the man with his finger on the nuclear button is too stupid to recognize an obvious photoshop job.
keiths,
Also highlights the importance of due process. It’s Trump’s excuse for not bringing him back. Actual fake news…
Allan:
Notably, Trump actually confirmed that he could bring Garcia back, thus admitting that he’s in violation of the Supreme Court order.
Interviewer:
Trump:
Interviewer:
Trump:
Interviewer:
Trump:
Interviewer:
Trump:
Interviewer:
Trump:
Interviewer:
Trump:
Interviewer:
An “egregious and immoral act”? So this is what you are getting worked up about? Migration? Heh, I should’ve known.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe what draws these immigrants to the US is work. They fill labour shortages in unpopular sectors like agriculture and construction.
Could you please explain how these “illegal crossings” result in “murdered Americans”, preferably without getting into racist stereotypes. If you really care about the murder rates in your country, you may want to take a look at gun control. I believe you are backing up the wrong political party in that respect.
Corneel,
I am not only concerned about murder rates in my country I am concerned about them close to my town.
Our country was built on immigration but there is a legal process in order to enter. The country adds about 1 million legal immigrants per year. This is very different than illegal border crossings.
Illegal immigration allows gang members, drug traffickers, human trafficker and criminals to enter our country.
Are you ok with illegal immigration in your country? Do you have data you can share that shows gun control is an effective deterrent in your country?
Google is your friend. Obviously, you are going to view these guys as “packed with leftwing bias”, but what about the US Dept of Justice? or theCato Institute, ffs?
Anyone who has looked at this AT ALL knows that immigrants, both legal and illegal, are significantly less criminal than “real Americans”. The benefits to the US economy are huge, too, whether it’s Irish carpenters or Mexican crop-pickers. Of course, reactions to those two groups do differ…
DNA_Jock,
Are you advocating for open US borders?
colewd
Bill, try and read what people write and respond to what they say.
The sealioning is wearisome.
Naah, just less horrendously racist policies.
DNA_Jock,
I agree we should not have racist policies. My problem is a border that has been out of control.