Fox’s Chris Wallace actually got Trump’s economic adviser Larry Kudlow to admit on air that Donald Trump doesn’t have a clue how tariffs actually work.
CHRIS WALLACE: Trump keep saying China pays the tariffs he's imposed. That's not true. American importers do, right?
LARRY KUDLOW: Both sides pay.
CW: The Chinese aren't paying!
LK: No, but they'll suffer GDP losses.
CW: But Trump says China pays.
LK: Both sides will suffer. pic.twitter.com/eHcxHmBLoX
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 12, 2019
Now #brokeahontas, Trump’s newest trending Twitter handle, has no idea how things are actually paid for in this life, because paying bills is not his thing. That’s for the plebes like you and me, who don’t have the benefit of tax laws that allow us to weasel out of our obligations and welch on all our responsibilities, and do it multiple times, no less.
Americans are going to pay dearly for Trump’s trade war fantasies. That was evident long ago, but now the topic is heating up, since Mango Moron announced on Friday that tariffs would be raised on $200 billion of goods from China from 10 percent to 25 percent. The Chinese government is of course retaliating. Cover your head and duck, because this is not going to be pleasant.
Meanwhile, people who actually know a thing or two about how the economy and international trade really work, are weighing in and it is worrisome to say the least, how wide the gap is between Trump’s simplistic notions and the actual ways of the world.
The exact opposite has been proven. https://t.co/qsCsafTz3b https://t.co/ltLhsTqyDt
— Ben White (@morningmoneyben) May 13, 2019
Trump lies like the proverbial rug. Remember his now-famous line, “If you just say it, they’ll believe it. I don’t know why, but they do.” That’s his philosophy of life, in a nutshell.
Yeah. The people who “don’t get it” include your own economic advisors —> https://t.co/hQ0rC32oeS
Maybe if you just ban all trade, you’ll achieve “10% GDP”. Just say it, they’ll believe it. https://t.co/PyouvCkgBw
— Michael Clemens (@m_clem) May 13, 2019
Here’s some more winning.
Soybean prices. So much winning. pic.twitter.com/nIdjcyoqdu
— Peter Kaufman (@inklake) May 12, 2019
GDP got a boost because imports fell after surging in the second half of 2018 to beat tariffs that were then put on hold (until now) https://t.co/RidyKHsw7J
— Scott Lanman (@scottlanman) May 13, 2019
The Oval Office is occupied by a sociopath suffering from Dunning-Kruger effect (see my other post this morning) and he honestly believes that if he just tells a convincing enough lie that people will buy it and he’ll do just fine — and why wouldn’t he believe it? It got him to the highest office in the land via television, on a career with zero elective office, not even a seat in student council in high school.
Too bad this is real life and there’s a terrible price to be paid for this folly and you and I are picking up the tab. Trump is borrowing money from the Department of Defense budget to subsidize the farmers and so we lose on taxes — and I pray to God the farmers have enough sense not to vote for this moron a second time. If they do, they have a death wish, plain and simple. Here’s a good synopsis of how Trump is screwing the very people who voted for him.
hungry and busy (working two jobs to survive) so republicans can control them. This issue stresses me beyond normal levels. Have lived in South and Central American countries and seen how hetting out from under this is almost impossible.
— BlueJay Beep (@bluejaybeep) May 12, 2019
And bear this in mind about Larry Kudlow: back in the nineties, he was snorting rails of cocaine at Bear Stearns and making light of the signs that were clearly pointing to the 2008 housing bubble. So if Kudlow thinks we’re in trouble here, now, you can take it to the bank that things are one hell of a lot worse than you thought, and about to get worse still.
He now wants to take 1.5 BILLION from the DOD budget to pay for his effing wall.
Someone should put him back in the playpen with his blankie.
I read that the money from DOD that was going to go for the wall is going for farming subsidies — should I find a link to that story? I also read that he’s saying, again, Mexico is going to pay for the wall, which is sheer lunacy at this point. But I guess the “alternate facts” crowds buys this stuff.
I can tell you that grocery prices have already gone up, and there are little cost increases at restaurants. I watch this stuff like a hawk. I don’t want to see it get worse since I’m on a fixed income. Maybe driving for Lyft is in my future as a means to survive (which requires me to get a car that could do that.) Wow, retirement in the age of Trump. Glorious.
My income is fixed too – and Tr*mp wants to cut it, even though it’s not enough to live on now (Social Security – and they take Medicare premiums out of it). I buy as much as I can that’s been marked down to 50% or less, at the supermarket, because I can’t afford full price on most things. (I wish Congresscritters did their own grocery-buying. They’d learn a lot from paying for stuff in person.)
I had Social Security taking Medicare premiums for years, until I got MediCal to pick up the tab. Have you checked on this in your state? If you’re in California, I can help you with this issue.
I have too much income for MediCal – it was sending me paperwork a couple of years ago, but nothing ever happened; the insurance company they assigned me to isn’t one my primary-care guy uses, and I never heard anything from *them* anyway.
MediCal is screwing with me, too, right now. I got an extra $48 somehow in my govt check and so now they have thrown me off MediCal. When they see my huge dental bills, they’ll let me back on. I can’t pay 20% of medical bills. I would have to stay home and be sick if that was the case, or die. Medicare should pick up the entire tab, IMO, for elders, but right now we’ve got an administration that wants to gut it outright, so I don’t think I’m going to see increased benefits.
This is a true sign, I believe that Trump has reached the point of no return, repeating things in a desperate scramble out of the snake pit he has been building for the last two years, while the heat from your good man Adam Schiff, is, in a couple days going to let the doors of hell swing open for the Trump empire, his completely elegant and colorful imagination has already examined the detailed turning screws of Mueller’s REAL report being shown to the public … every time his toes touch the concrete in the bottom of his pool, he gets to sip the chlorinated water and his arms are tied behind him, an extreme panic attack every waking moment, a drowning malignant narcissist …
Can’t happen too soon, IMO. Nothing like being forced to live on processed cheese sandwiches to make ends meet, huh? Maybe canned Raviolis and discount soda will be the catalysts acquainting the third of us wearing MAGA hats with the reality of how that idiot traffic cone’s “policies” are working out for them.
Welp, gotta go–with Walmart’s lowlowlow prices getting ready to go through the roof, I’m running there to stockpile packs of pre-tarrif Ramen before they’re sold out….
This is very scary, and basics like food are indeed at stake, whether the idiots who watch Fox News (and shop at Wal-Mart) get this principal at all, which I doubt. Long story short, with my medical ailments being malpracticed, and being on disability, there were a few years where I couldn’t eat properly. Now I can eat whatever I want, within reason. (Don’t remember the last time I had lobster.) Point being, being hungry is a terrible thing. Until you’ve experienced it, you can’t fully appreciate how nice it is to just sail down the supermarket aisles and get nice cheese, fresh vegetables, some meat and fish. What i just described used to be a “normal” American diet — no longer. That is now eating high on the hog, and what you describe is going to be the norm for many people.
If we don’t get rid of Trump soon, there’s going to be an elite and an underclass and I don’t want to see that day.
Good talkin’ at ya, Holly. Thanks for dropping by.
I went through LOTS of hunger the early part of this decade, Ursula. It was the middle of the Great Recession, lost my car to repo, living off student loan disbursements from a shifty diploma mill that shut its doors two months ago (long after I got out with my degree, thankfully) and whatever writing jobs I could glom onto. I shocked a client and her business partner last month by saying that I was thankful to get close to the poverty line.
I’m now in a position where food is no longer a problem but the fear of going hungry remains. So I feel you. I also suspect that the elite class you mentioned may be noticing how much Trump is stealing from them with this tariff business. So getting rid of him may be easier than we think. Getting rid of the system that made him possible…ahh, trickier, far, far trickier.
I pray to God some “elites” (read: Kochs, Mercers, the lot of them) realize they’re going to lose money with the tariff business. Somebody has to get a grip on this situation, because it won’t be Trump. He believes he has a grip. He is that clueless.
As to hunger — I don’t want to tell you that story tonight, but there was a year when I was very skinny (looked great, felt like shit) because I literally wasn’t getting enough to eat. I would eat a cereal bar for lunch, a sandwich for dinner. Even pizza was a luxury. One of the worst years of my life, bar none. And I had an oblivious friend (whom I no longer talk to, and this is one of the reasons why) who used to tell me about “food banks” and “churches” — oh, yes, they’re giving away bags of great groceries in these places. I had to inform her about bread and refried beans being the staples in these places. Once I found a can of sardines and was thrilled. But she thought it was like grocery shopping, fresh vegetables, rice, canned chili, tuna, normal food — how I wish. How I wish.
That time of my life was horrible. I pray to God that I never get in that position again. I’m still broke by any reasonable yardstick, but I am a high roller compared to where I was at then.
Yeah, that former friend was clueless alright. It’s nothing like regular grocery shopping at those places. I’m still pissed over that line of crap on how folks on SNAP could supposedly buy a freaking lobster dinner (which, as I’m sure you know, is a great way to starve for the rest of the month) or how it’s supposed to be a supplement to buying your own food (with what money?). So I appreciate that you were willing to share that story with me.
That bit about the DOD budget makes me wonder…at this point, is there anybody in this country Donald John Trump HASN’T screwed over?
His kids, probably. For now.
I almost wish I could believe that.
I’ve got to do a fact check on the DOD budget. I did hear about him wanting to divert that money to the wall, but I read just yesterday that now he wants to give the farmers more subsidies. I’m all for helping the farmers all we can — when the need is legitimate, from natural disaster. They’re experiencing a Trump-made disaster, whole different kettle of fish.
He’s probably getting a little taste of the desperation in the fields on the one hand and that China is doing it to the farmers BECAUSE of his stupid use of Tariffs and since he can’t parse that intelligently, and NEVER admit an error, will take an end-around with borrowed money to float the dying farms, unfortunately that is another problem of Trump’s, very short term actions and no long term vision … a non-functional farm is a pit of horrors for a farmer and Trump provides no way out and still has the silly asshole grin on his ugly sneering face as he signs yet another losing EO ….
WTF, those Parkland Kids in the news are a hell of a lot smarter than this, LARRY KUDLOW, freak, of course, they are miles higher than DJT in the smarts department …