Trump laid-out his brilliant strategy in a Tweet.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 2580484098When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win. Example, when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don’t trade anymore-we win big. It’s easy!
I've posted a bunch about how the US government agrees that there is a trade surplus with Canada in the NAFTA thread... well, the parts of the US government that aren't Donald Trump.
Trump's understanding of how trade deficits work is, I would say, on par with his understanding of NATO countries owing the US for defence spending.
In the NAFTA thread, I touched on how Trump's way of negotiating with contractors seems to shed some light on his trade strategy. That tweet confirms it.
The man is a simpleton. His amazing solution is, "don't trade anymore-we win big". What can one respond to that?
https://www.politico.eu/article/trumps- ... ouse-exit/Gary Cohn, President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser, has been rumored to be on the brink of leaving the White House for months but stayed for one main reason: to stop the president from imposing steep tariffs.
By Thursday afternoon, Cohn had lost the fight.
In a meeting with steel industry executives, Trump announced plans for a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and a 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports.
The decision came after a frantic 24 hours in which Cohn and others tried to talk Trump off the ledge. At one point, aides were sure Trump would make the announcement. Then they said he wouldn’t. Finally, sitting alongside steel executives, he did.
Other advisers, like Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarro,
apparently supported the idea (that article is worth a read). Ross has also happily repeated horseshit about trade deficits in relation to the NAFTA talks. Ross and Trump seems to have
a lot in common when it comes to numbers, so I can kinda see why they might get along.
The saving grace may be that Trump blurts-out whatever ephemeral thought bubble is floating through his head at any given moment in time. The bubbles which float-around five minutes later have nothing in common with the previous bubbles. The guy has a brain that utters snaps, crackles, and pops more randomly than chaos theory can handle.
The ultimate position stands a good chance of looking quite different.
As Cohn eyeballs the door, another thought occurs to me. While Trump has jettisoned a few high-quality jokers like Bannon, there is also the risk that the only people who stick with him are the Wilbur Ross, Peter Navarro, and Stephen Miller types. Rather than regressing toward the mean, the chaos of this administration may end-up distilling the crazy. Given that Trump appears to have very few concrete opinions of his own, that could be a very, very bad thing.
Imagine a world where we say, "Too bad Ivanka and Jared headed back to New York".
Indeed...
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white- ... ls-n852641According to two officials, Trump's decision to launch a potential trade war was born out of anger at other simmering issues and the result of a broken internal process that has failed to deliver him consensus views that represent the best advice of his team.
On Wednesday evening, the president became "unglued," in the words of one official familiar with the president's state of mind.
A trifecta of events had set him off in a way that two officials said they had not seen before: Hope Hicks' testimony to lawmakers investigating Russia's interference in the 2016 election, conduct by his embattled attorney general and the treatment of his son-in-law by his chief of staff.
Trump, the two officials said, was angry and gunning for a fight, and he chose a trade war, spurred on by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarro, the White House director for trade — and against longstanding advice from his economic chair Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.
The article goes-on to outline the logistical shit-show that lead to Trump's announcement.
Now, I've not yet run a country, so I'm not exactly an expert with first-hand experience. Yet, I strongly suspect this is a fine example of how to not run a country... or casino, or, you know, anything other than a reality show (at least, the on-camera parts, something tells me Mark Burnett would not be a very rich man if he ran his shows like this).
Hmmm... silver lining... erm... there's only, like, a maximum of just under seven years of this sort of thing left. What's the worst that could happen if a trade war doesn't go well for Trump and he tanks the world economy in the lead-up to 2020? Is he gonna invade Canad...
... I have to go, ahh, see to some things.
A quantum state of signature may or may not be here... you just ruined it.