Make no mistake, if this incoming MAGA Trojan Horse can effect a clean sweep of all of the major events in America’s past (but particularly the results of the 2020 election) and get people to believing a revisionist history version they will do it. This is QAnon on steroids. Here is more evidence today. Tariffs are back on Trump’s lips. He’s cobbled together a fantasy world where the economic wonder of tariffs was responsible for a golden age in America and will herald in yet another. He’s nuts. It never happened that way. He refers back a lot to President McKinley and tariffs, cherry picking facts from that era that make it appear that tariffs are the way and the light. They emphatically did not lay the foundation for American wealth, slavery did. That’s another subject the Republicans would like to go away.
— Voluntaryist Minister (@OnomyAlex) January 2, 2025
Trump is hyping tariffs because he lies about what they are. He lies that they are checks, basically, made payable to the treasury. He claims that China paid “billions in tariffs” when he was in office before. No. They did not. Not to the United States, in any event. I don’t pretend to know who the Chinese do business with and what imported goods Chinese citizens pay a tariffs on, but I can tell you that in the United States if goods come in from a foreign country with a tariff attached, the consumer pays the tariff at the checkout counter.
Trump has his golden age fantasy going hot and heavy right now. Maybe that’s what his inauguration speech will be about, God help us, a compendium of lies about tariffs bringing a golden age.
And there’s one other caveat: you can rest assured that the goods, materials and services that have a tariff on them will not be paid by Trump’s buddies. They will be exempt. That’s the other part of this scam. We are about to see inside wheeling and dealing like never before. Cronyism is the watchword in Washington like never before.
Trump isn’t bringing a golden age, he’s bringing back the age of the robber barons. And they preceeded the Great Depression. Expect Trump to create a magnificent economic mess. MAGA doesn’t know what’s coming. They probably won’t know until it hits them. Unfortunately, it’s going to hit everybody. Tidal waves are no respecter of persons.
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