When former President Donald Trump was asked about his plan to lower the cost of groceries, he said that he would slap tariffs on foreign food imports.Scott Lincicome and Sophia Bagley of the libertarian Cato Institute, however, believe Trump's plan is "deranged" and they write in The Atlantic that ...
  • ddh@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    68·
    2 个月前

    Why do average Americans still rate Trump as better on the economy? It’s certainly nothing rational.

  • Ruorc@lemmy.ml
    63·
    2 个月前

    He doesn’t understand the nuances of making policy decisions, so his default answer to stuff like this is to just impose tariffs because that’s all he knows. He doesn’t care to understand and would likely eat the crayons you use if you were to try to explain it to him. He’s just incapable of that sort of mental growth.

    • watson387
      35·
      2 个月前

      He doesn’t understand anything. He’s lived in a completely separate reality his entire life.

    • Wrench@lemmy.world
      11·
      2 个月前

      I don’t know how you can miss that, though.

      Tariffs on imported goods means the price raises to cover the increased cost to import it.

      Tariffs are a mechanism to encourage domestic production by making foreign competition more expensive.

      It’s literally the opposite of reducing the cost to consumers.

      Trump has to understand this. But he knows his rabid base do not. So he says it like it’s going to help consumers, rather than exclusively the domestic producers that are already overcharging.

      • djsoren19@yiffit.net
        8·
        2 个月前

        Trump has to understand this.

        Who says? It seems like these days he doesn’t even know which state or city he’s in, I think the likelihood of him understanding literally any political theory at all is close to zero.

        • Wrench@lemmy.world
          3·
          2 个月前

          It’s certainly possible, but I don’t buy that level of ignorance.

          Trump was savvy enough to keep interest rates low to heavily inflate real estate as the obvious money dump for free money. As a real estate mogul, this directly benefited him personally.

          And don’t give me that nieve nonsense that the president doesn’t control the fed reserve. Trump’s corruption was thorough and complete.

          Trump absolutely understands basic economic principles of supply and demand. He is constantly trying to manipulate competition to give himself more power so he can gain from it. It’s the same as raising tariffs to give domestic producers more power so they can raise their profits at the cost to the consumer.

          He just doesn’t give a shit about the consumer, only the kickbacks he gets from the producers.

      • dalekcaan@lemm.ee
        7·
        2 个月前

        Honestly no, I don’t think Trump understands. The way he talks about his precious tariffs, I’m pretty sure he’s under the impression that imposing a tariff on Chinese goods means making China pay for it. It’s really just the latest iteration of “build a wall and make Mexico pay for it.”

      • Ruorc@lemmy.ml
        4·
        2 个月前

        You’re giving him way too much credit. Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. While Trump has certainly performed acts out of malice, he is also the epitome of stupidity. He’s suggested nuking hurricanes, injecting bleach, and has stared straight into the sun during a solar eclipse, etc, etc. He’s a terrible person of course, but he’s also a complete moron.

        • orcrist@lemm.ee
          3·
          2 个月前

          I think with Trump we’re forced to attribute many things to both malice and stupidity. The more he opens his mouth, the more you realize that he does have bad intentions.

        • Wrench@lemmy.world
          2·
          2 个月前

          Sure. He’s an idiot, no argument. But I think he understands leverage, and what tariffs means to domestic leverage over their consumers because of lack of competition. But ultimately, his understanding doesn’t matter, the voters understanding does. And I doubt many who are considering voting for him understand that tariffs are worst for them personally.

  • IphtashuFitz@lemmy.worldEnglish
    51·
    2 个月前

    I’ll slap tariffs on banana imports so people buy domestically grown bananas!

    I’ll slap tariffs on cocoa imports so people buy domestically grown cocoa!

  • OlinOfTheHillPeople@lemmy.world
    19·
    2 个月前

    Here’s his VP’s plan:

    “I think we are increasingly in a situation where we are going to choose between one or the other. We’re going to have to get a little uncomfortable on some of these things or maybe you’re going to have to be willing to pay a little bit more for certain consumer goods. We may even have to be willing to attack some of the companies financially that are waging war on the American people.”

    • orcrist@lemm.ee
      4·
      2 个月前

      Hey, that sounds a little bit like anti-monopoly talk, doesn’t it. Crazy how price fixing might be bad for the average person.

      … I don’t think that’s where he was going, but that’s where he started.

  • toots@lemm.eeEnglish
    18·
    2 个月前

    Something belched up thoughtlessly does not count as a plan.

  • AA5B@lemmy.world
    15·
    2 个月前

    I’d quibble with calling it “deranged”. Illogical sure. Nonsense, even ridiculous, but not deranged.

    His only real play has always been to define a scapegoat and stoke outrage. That’s the point here, rather than anything useful

    • RubberDuck@lemmy.world
      4·
      2 个月前

      No, slapping tarrifs on imported goods means they become more expensive as the tarrifs will be included in the price.

      If you think that american companies that produce domestically (untariffed) will not raise their prices to maximize their profits you might have what Trump has. Plus a lot of their raw materials/components come from abroad and will also be tariffed.

      Laat round of tarrifs Trump imposed led to retaliatory tarrifs by china. This hurt the US farmers so hard that most of the us tarrifs revenue went to farmers as subsidies.

  • Sludgeyy@lemmy.world
    9·
    2 个月前

    Hey! USA Avocado industry would be thriving if Mexico wasn’t shipping all theirs in without a tariff.

    But a sable genius once said. “What we have is a thing called the gasoline. We have gasoline. We have so much gasoline, we don’t know what to do. They don’t have gasoline. So why are we making a product that they dominate? They’re going to dominate.”

    This was in reply to the question “How are you going to bring down the cost of food and groceries?”.

    I think you can apply the same logic here. “What we have is a thing called the corn. We have corn. We have so much corn, we don’t know what to do. They don’t have corn. So why are we making a product [avocados] that they dominate? They’re [Mexico] going to dominate.”