Trump's $16 billion farm bailout means you're paying for his tariff war twice
We’ll say this for President Trump: When he misunderstands something, he misunderstands it more than anyone else in creation.
Take the business of tariffs. Trump is unshakably convinced that his tariffs are a tax on China. He repeated this grossly erroneous claim just Thursday, during his announcement of a new $16 billion bailout for farmers harmed by, yes, his tariff war.
“Just so you understand,” he said, “these tariffs are paid for largely by China. A lot of people like to say by ‘us.’ ”
Well, the people who say that are economists and other experts who have done the math, and found that the tariffs Trump has imposed on imports from China cost American consumers $68.8 billion last year, though some of that spending got funneled back to some domestic producers in the form of higher prices (which their customers, of course, paid).
But our main topic here is that $16 billion bailout, and what it says about who pays for Trump’s trade war and how much. The newly announced bailout comes on top of $12 billion in emergency farm aid he announced last year, aimed heavily at soybean farmers whose exports to China have fallen to zero, thanks to the trade war.
As Jordan Weissmann observes in Slate, the $28 billion total is “about what the U.S. spent last school year on Pell grants for college students.” That raises doubts about Trump’s priorities.
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/opinion-trumps-dollar16-billion-farm-bailout-means-youre-paying-for-his-tariff-war-twice/ar-AABRXSA?li=BBnbfcN
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