Stupid or Evil? It’s Definitely Not Liberation

[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

I don’t have the words for Donald Trump’s liberation-by-massive-tax-increase yesterday. I’ll let an academic handle it:

The one problem with France 24’s video above is that it repeats Trump’s bullshit, even though it offers a rebuttal to the tariffs themselves.

The “economically illiterate” bullshit it repeated was the percentage Trump claimed other countries assessed the US. The numbers are skewed.

One potential source for the inaccuracy: AI. Krishnan Rohit queried several AI platforms and received a freakishly uniform response which may explain Trump’s numbers.

The rest of the thread can be found here.

Somebody with more smarts about large language models (LLMs) and AI will have to validate this, but it sure looks fishy. Given Team Trump’s predilection for appointing/hiring individuals based on ideology and affinity with Trump, it’s not impossible AI was relied on during the tariff formulation and rollout process, versus the expertise and experience of qualified individuals.

Whatever the case, Trump just rolled out a massive tax increase on the American public. Oddly, CNN conveyed this succinctly in spite of its bent toward pro-Trump rhetoric:

Note the rollout using one of the stupidest Trump appointees across either of Trump’s terms — Peter Navarro. He’d parrot bullshit all day if a mic is shoved in his face.

Also note the phrase “repeated belief,” not a fact but a belief. Team Trump expects the public take what they are saying on faith and not on the basis of past experience.

And then the outright lies CNN’s Chris Isidore points out in that bit emphasized with a red underline: tariffs are NOT paid abroad but here in the US by the importer. The tariffs are added to the cost of goods sold, thereby increasing the likelihood prices to consumers will be higher very soon.

Another academic explains how tariffs — taxes on buyers of imported goods work. See Richard Wolff’s explanation at 5:17 to 6:20 in this video:

Tariffs on imported goods = taxes on us.

You like coffee and tea? It’s going to be more expensive, especially since we don’t grow tea here and our coffee industry is miniscule, consisting of Kona coffee beans. Even fabric for clothing made in the US will be more expensive because we don’t have a fabric industry here in the US any longer at any serious scale; it would take years to re-establish manufacturing here.

Re-establishing industries to replace products now so much more expensive will be challenging given the cost of materials and the competition for labor both to build facilities and staff them after completion.

It’ll take much longer than the 10 years over which this massive tax increase is supposed to generate $6 trillion dollars in revenue — that’s about $1800 per American citizen, $150 more a month.

This country has made this same stupid choice before, so stupid it became part of a movie’s economics teacher’s schtick:

What does uber conservative Ben Stein think about this iteration of voodoo economics rising from the grave, wearing orange foundation and a straw-like hairdo, stomping about as if credibly alive? What does he think about Trump kicking off an unnecessary recession and possibly a depression with his irrational import duties?

This entire mess represents two facets of Trump his base haven’t accepted or ignored. He’s the kind of guy who likes to destroy stuff but can’t successfully build a better version afterward, as if he’s permanently stuck in the demolition phase of construction.

He’s also a plain old fashioned mafioso. All of this is a form of shakedown, borne by the American public as well as global trading partners. You know he’d lift tariffs on any country that offered him vigorish of some form. Quid pro quos are his thing.

He’s a made man — which may explain why tiny islands with US bases on them being assessed tariffs, but Russia isn’t.

Are we really supposed to believe that because trade with Russia is so low that Russia should escape tariffs altogether, while our most valuable trade partners haven’t?