A Wall Street Journal interview on trade shows Trump has no idea what he's doing

[babylonsister]

A Wall Street Journal interview on trade shows Trump has no idea what he’s doing
He confuses tariffs and interest rates, and invents phantom new steel plants.
By Matthew Yglesias@[e-mail] Nov 27, 2018, 10:30am EST


At one point during his latest interview with the Wall Street Journal, President Trump mixes up tariffs (a kind of sales tax imposed on imported goods) with interest rates, which are the extra money you owe when you take out a loan. Bob Davis, the journalist conducting the interview, corrects the president. It’s the kind of verbal slip that could happen to anyone. Except that Trump, after acknowledging the error, flips back around and makes it again later in the interview.

It’s the kind of mixup that would get a first-term House member flayed in the right-wing press, but Trump is the president of the United States.

And it’s not just some random issue where he can’t keep the words straight. Trade policy is, along with immigration, one of his signature issues where he personally has really made a mark and is governing in a way that other Republicans probably wouldn’t. During the 2016 campaign, it was routine to warn that Trump’s blundering ignorance on trade matters would end up tanking the global economy. That hasn’t happened, and in reality, the continuation of the steady recovery that began midway through Obama’s first term has been the clear bright spot of Trump-era America.

But from listening to Trump talk, our luck seems almost unbelievable. And one thing the interview reminds us of is that of late, Trump has implemented relatively little of the Trump trade agenda. If our luck holds up, it’ll probably be because we don’t really get to see what the full Trump would look like.

Trump mixes up tariffs and interest rates

If you borrow money from a bank, the bank will want you to pay the money back — with interest. By the same token, when the government sells bonds, it eventually pays back the full value of the bond — plus interest. And the Federal Reserve Bank tries to influence the economy primarily by manipulating interest rates. If it thinks aggregate spending in the economy is too low, it makes interest rates lower. If it thinks aggregate spending has become too high and is sparking inflation, it makes them higher.

A tariff, by contrast, is a tax on imports. Instead of imposing a 10 percent sales tax on all cars, you could impose a 10 percent sales tax on imported cars and call it a tariff.

Or if you’re Trump, you could just mix up the two. Here, talking about the burgeoning trade war with China, he threatens to raise “interest rates” on China (he means tariffs), gets corrected, acknowledges that he misspoke, and then does it again:

President Trump: So but what I’m saying is that I am very happy with what’s going on right now. We’ve only used a small portion of what we have to use because I have another $267 billion [in imports] to go if I want, and then I’m also able to raise interest rates. And we have money that is pouring right now, pouring —

Mr. Davis: When you say interest rates, do you mean — do you mean tariffs, as opposed to interest rates?

President Trump: I’m sorry, the rate, the 25 percent rate —

Mr. Davis: Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK.

President Trump: Without even doing any more.

Mr. Davis: Yeah.

President Trump: We have money that is pouring into our treasury right now, and on January 1 it’ll become much more so. And here’s the story: If we don’t make a deal, then I’m going to put the $200 — and it’s really $67 — billion additional on at an interest rate between 10 and 25 depending.

Raising taxes on Chinese-made goods is, obviously, a way to hurt China that, potentially, could cause China to want to make concessions to the United States in order to get us to change course. But one of the oddities of Trump’s thinking on this is he doesn’t seem to acknowledge that a large tax increase on Chinese-made goods is also just a big regressive tax hike on Americans.

He talks about “money that is pouring into our treasury right now,” but that just means that even as he’s slashed the corporate tax rate, he is taking steps to raise taxes on everyone. So far, most Americans haven’t seen higher prices, but Trump doesn’t seem to know why that is or care that his next moves may change that.

Trump is cavalier about Americans paying more

more...

https://www.vox.com/2018/11/27/18114141/trump-wall-street-journal-interview

[Wellstone ruled]

1. CNBC did their

Their level best to cover for this idiot this AM. Still pushing the Trump agenda . Wonder how that equation of Winners and Losers is working out for them.