The Trump Administration: A Clusterfuck in the Making

[asahi]

@CalMeacham

I don’t know if this has been posted here or in another thread, but it addresses a question I’ve had for a while:

Does Trump genuinely believe his own trade war rhetoric?

That Trump actually believes his insane idea about how tariffs work is alarming, but that Congress – including the unmovable and recalcitrant Senate – would allow this to continue is damned near unbelievable.

Aren’t many of them businessmen, whose livelihood will be disrupted by policies shaped by our divorced-from-reality president? Surely they can’t ALL be total partisan hacks – or, at least, you’d think the ones who didn’t have Alien Seed Pods under their beds would have by now forced their fellow senators to confront reality.

No, except for the increased political pressure that they will feel from frustrated voters, they won’t be the ones to feel the disruption. As long as they are connected to Washington, they will have lucrative lobbying and administrative jobs – don’t you worry about that. It’s you, I, and most people who play by rules and don’t have connections to billionaires with offshore accounts and shell companies in tax havens who get fucked.

What Trump is doing is creating a new type of political system in this country, and in so doing, he will also create a new kind of economic system as well (I’ve argued before that economic and political systems are intertwined). The reason people like Gary Cohn left was because Cohn, a global investor, opposed disrupting the existing post WWII economic-political system predicated on international trade and cooperation. He saw no reason to disrupt it. Sure, it had laws, but he saw no reason to destroy a system that was, for the most part, doing what it was designed to do: make a lot of people rich.

Trump is replacing it with a system based on, among other things, ethno-nationalism and replacing an eocnomic-political system based largely on cooperation with one that is instead based on direct confrontation. This transition, assuming it continues, will indeed be disruptive, and it will cause chaos to the many millions of investors - including you and me - who have bought into this system that has existed for decades (think about your IRA and your 401k). I don’t honestly know what Donald Trump truly believes in terms of the outcome, but whatever he believes, whatever he thinks his strategy is (even if it’s no strategy), this is where we’re headed. It’s fraught with political risk because it’s economically disruptive, which will be unpopular.

And in response to increased pressure from frustrated voters, the GOP’s solution is to continue weakening democracy so that people face stiffer consequences for criticizing them in public. Economically, Trump and the GOP will eventually set up a system in which loyalists and those who suffer in silence are rewarded, and those who complain or challenge them will be targets for retribution. That Trump is threatening to do serious damage to iconic brands like Apple, Harley Davidson, and others probably hardly registers with him. It probably registers with a fair number of GOP congresspeople but they’ve gone too far to turn back now, and they figure that they will find ways to make money in the political system and make their money work for them. Trump and his team of economic nationalists believe that they are slaying a giant yellow dragon in Asia, and they will try for the moment to convince the rest of us that China, not his stupidity, is the problem.

FTR, China is a problem, but a manageable one. Trump, however, will make our China problem a lot less manageable. In the short term, we may give China a bloody nose and a cut lip, but they will get up and punch back, and it could hurt - a lot.

[Ike_Witt]

@El_Kabong

but we are dealing with perhaps the most intellectually lazy President in history.

You can drop intellectually from that sentence and it is still accurate.

[dasmoocher]

@asahi

I don’t honestly know what Donald Trump truly believes in terms of the outcome, but whatever he believes, whatever he thinks his strategy is (even if it’s no strategy), this is where we’re headed. It’s fraught with political risk because it’s economically disruptive, which will be unpopular.

One problem is Trump doesn’t seem to care about long-term economic consequences (from last Dec.):

Trump is reportedly not worried about a massive US debt crisis as he’ll be out of office by then

President Donald Trump is said to not be worried about setting the US up for a massive debt crisis because he doesn’t think it’ll erupt until after he leaves office.

Sources close to the presidency told The Daily Beast that Trump had repeatedly shrugged off any concerns about the rising national debt because it was projected to come to a head only after he would finish a second term.

During a 2017 briefing with senior officials, Trump responded to a presentation of charts and graphics by saying, “Yeah, but I won’t be here,” according to a source The Daily Beast said witnessed the comment.

As far as a Trump economic strategy goes, there’s this gem:

The same Washington Post article, however, echoed an anecdote from the journalist Bob Woodward’s latest book, " Fear: Trump in the White House." When Gary Cohn, then Trump’s top economic adviser, brought the issue to Trump’s attention, the president reportedly suggested the US could simply print more money to pay off the debt.

[Aspenglow]

@Ike_Witt

You can drop intellectually from that sentence and it is still accurate.

Also the word, “perhaps.”

[asahi]

@El_Kabong

Near as I can tell, Trump has made it abundantly clear that he believes tariffs somehow instantly make manufacturing costs cheaper in the US than overseas. In my view, he knows perfectly well that consumers are paying the bulk of the tariffs, but that the payoff will supposedly be (in some rosy future) happy, humming US factories again, staffed by grateful workers who want nothing more than to spend their lives screwing one part into another, assuming that a machine isn’t better at doing that instead.

Of course the issue is far more complicated than Trump’s absurdly simplistic take on it, but we are dealing with perhaps the most intellectually lazy President in history.

The trade war goes beyond economics. He has a staff of anti-China, Inc hawks, who believe that the United States has to be the dominant global power, and that we have to make China capitulate to American pressure. In some regards, there are some parallels between how the US viewed Japan in the 1930s and how we view China now.

China’s strategy is to wear down the current administration and hope that farmers get tired of losing out on trade. It doesn’t want to take extreme measures like selling a significant portion of US treasuries because that would end up hurting them as much as us. It would also make the world less sympathetic to the Chinese and they than are now.

But if this doesn’t stop soon, China will be pushed into a corner.

[dasmoocher]

@Aspenglow

Also the word, “perhaps.”

My first thought was it could be pared down to “Trump is lazy”.

My second thought was those Verbal Section SAT questions:

Trump is to Lazy as Shit is to_______

A) Stinky
B) Unwanted
C) Disgusting
D) [insert suggest here]

[running_coach]

@Ike_Witt

You can drop intellectually from that sentence and it is still accurate.

Keep the intellectually and replace lazy with deficient.

[Buck_Godot]

@k9bfriender

It’s not whether or not he knows how tariffs work. He has no excuse not to, but I don’t know if he can grasp the concept or not.

His base, OTOH, has no idea, and believes they work however he says they work.

Once again the Democrats are dropping the ball then it comes to using word choice to frame the debate. The Republicans are masters of this, giving us Death Taxes, Obamacare, and partial birth abortions. From now on no Democrat should banish the word Tariff from their vocabulary. Instead they should use call them import taxes. Rather than saying Trump’s Tariffs on China are hurting the economy they should say, Trump’s taxes on Americans importing goods from China are hurting the economy.

[jsc1953]

Trump is abusing and misusing a law that was designed to give the president the power to impose sanctions on state-sponsored terrorism. Our international trade policy is solely in the hands of an idiot who doesn’t understand what tariffs mean.

And not a peep out of Congress. This is horrifying.

[k9bfriender]

@Buck_Godot

Once again the Democrats are dropping the ball then it comes to using word choice to frame the debate. The Republicans are masters of this, giving us Death Taxes, Obamacare, and partial birth abortions. From now on no Democrat should banish the word Tariff from their vocabulary. Instead they should use call them import taxes. Rather than saying Trump’s Tariffs on China are hurting the economy they should say, Trump’s taxes on Americans importing goods from China are hurting the economy.

Good point, “taxes” is a trigger word to conservatives.

[eschereal]

@k9bfriender

@The_Other_Waldo_Pepper

Can’t we just stop migrants with the occasional warning shot?

No, you’re thinking of anti-vaxxers

nicely done

[jasg]

@Ike_Witt

You can drop intellectually from that sentence and it is still accurate.

@running_coach

Keep the intellectually and replace lazy with deficient.

Or…

“but we are dealing with perhaps the most intellectually [del]lazy[/del] incapable President in history.”

[k9bfriender]

@jasg

Or…

“but we are dealing with perhaps the most intellectually [del]lazy[/del] incapable President in history.”

And once again, it is as true without the “intellectually” bit.

[E-DUB]

This guy lays it out pretty well.

Interesting character with an interesting take on the tariffs.

[dasmoocher]

@E-DUB

This guy lays it out pretty well.

Interesting character with an interesting take on the tariffs.

If you can’t watch the video, the guy’s point is that the US gets half its fruits and vegetables from Mexico (I don’t know if that’s actually true). Tariffs on imported produce make them more expensive and so should increase demand for domestic produce. Increased demand should drive increased production. Increased production means more labor will be needed.

Where does Trump think manual farm labor comes from?

[Slash1972]

@dasmoocher

If you can’t watch the video, the guy’s point is that the US gets half its fruits and vegetables from Mexico (I don’t know if that’s actually true). Tariffs on imported produce make them more expensive and so should increase demand for domestic produce. Increased demand should drive increased production. Increased production means more labor will be needed.

Where does Trump think manual farm labor comes from?

Once the wall is built, all those illegals will leave, thereby freeing up jobs for the hundreds of thousands of currently jobless Americans who will pick fruits and vegetables for minimum wage. #MAGA!

[Great_Antibob]

@dasmoocher

Increased demand should drive increased production. Increased production means more labor will be needed.

Increased production is well and good but do you think fruit grows on trees…well, never mind.

But certainly, it’s not something that can be done overnight. Or even in a few months. Even with readily available labor, it will take some time, potentially years, to make up the shortfall. And even then, at best, it brings the local price down to just under the tariff adjusted prices - the sugar industry is a good example of this or dairy in Canada.

I think people are giving Trump too much credit for intelligence. All signs indicate he really does believe the other country pays the tariff and that he is somehow the only one intelligent/tough enough to come up with that solution. He also seems to believe throwing enough money at a problem will make things go faster than possible (his ideas about getting NASA exploration timetables moved up to within his term fall under this category).

[k9bfriender]

@Slash1972

Once the wall is built, all those illegals will leave, thereby freeing up jobs for the hundreds of thousands of currently jobless Americans who will pick fruits and vegetables for minimum wage. #MAGA!

I can’t wait until all americans get to toil in the fields for minimum wage. (heh, just kidding, MW will be repealed.)

Fortunately, our merit based immigration system will make sure that our high skilled jobs are filled.

Americans in the fields, and the Chinese in the boardrooms, this is the MAGA vision of america.

[Johnny_L.A]

@dasmoocher

[T]he US gets half its fruits and vegetables from Mexico (I don’t know if that’s actually true).

FAKE NEWS!!! The U.S. only gets 43% of its fruits and vegetables from Mexico!

[Euphonious_Polemic]

@Buck_Godot

Once again the Democrats are dropping the ball then it comes to using word choice to frame the debate. The Republicans are masters of this, giving us Death Taxes, Obamacare, and partial birth abortions. From now on no Democrat should banish the word Tariff from their vocabulary. Instead they should use call them import taxes. Rather than saying Trump’s Tariffs on China are hurting the economy they should say, Trump’s taxes on Americans importing goods from China are hurting the economy.

This point bears repeating.