I am writing this since the last days of our captivity.
In fact, by when some of you read this, we will be free. If everything goes according to the White House Plan, on April 2 it will go down in history as the “Liberation Day” of the United States.
Steve Bannon, an outstanding Trump's unofficial advisor, has so much confidence in his success that he is already talking about making the day of release a Federal Holiday next year.
But we are advancing ourselves. What will we be released on the day of liberation?
The Trump administration has been strangely parsimonious by providing one of its phrases of crowded patented for what they release us. One would think that something like “globalist tyranny”, “neoliberal servitude”, “Sucker state of surplus production. “
But we can infer what they have in mind of the context. On March 21, President Trump published on social networks: “April 2 is the day of liberation in the United States! For decades, we have cheated and abused by all the nations of the world, both friend and enemy. Now it is time that the good United States obtains part of that money, and respect, back. God bless the United States!”
To this end, Trump intends to impose radical tariffs on foreign cars and reciprocal tariffs on each US trade partner.
The exact numbers and other details are murky. “No one knows what is happening,” Politico cited an ally of the White House near Trump's internal circle, as he said during the weekend. “What are going to tariff?
The White House Commercial Advisor, Peter Navarro, expects these tariffs to increase $ 600 billion annually. Almost all serious economists throughout the ideological spectrum understand that US consumers would pay most of that. Therefore, if it is “successful”, Trump would be imposing the greatest and most regressive Tax increase in history.
It would be regressive because taxes would affect the poor and class media much more difficult than the rich, because most of their income is destined for basic concepts such as gas, food and clothing.
The challenge of writing about the “Day of Liberation” is that it is so incandescently stupid that it is equivalent to a conceptual piñata: you can hit it from any angle and obtain some reward for your effort.
To begin with, many people understand that tariffs on, for example, foreign steel makes foreign steel more expensive. As a result, the things we do of foreign steel also become more expensive. However, what is overlooked is that tax steel also makes steel further expensive. When you do something more scarce (steel, eggs, Taylor Swift tickets, prices go up.
Politically, the idea of doing things deliberately, like literally all things, more expensive, when it was chosen in large part due to popular exhaustion with inflation, is as irrational that it is like economic policy equivalent to a Dali painting.
Geopolitically, exploit our alliances and the global economy in the name of “self -sufficiency” is unfathomably idiot. The more a country is based on tariffs to “protect” its economy, The poorer is. How many more friendly business partners have a country, the louder it is.
The source of this Asinity Geyer is the simple fact that Trump does not understand how trade works.
British economist Charles Goodhart coined the “Goodhart Law”: “When a measure becomes a goal, it ceases to be a good measure.” For Trump, the measure in question is the balance of trade. He believes that commercial deficits are proof that the United States is being “scammed.” This is how trade works.
Every time you cut your hair, you have a commercial deficit with the barber. Are you being torn?
Trump's obsession with Canada illustrates his confusion. We have a commercial deficit with Canada, under a commercial agreement that prepared in its first mandate. Therefore, Trump states that we “subsidize“Canada $ 200 billion a year (an invented number, but that does not come to the case). The only reason we have a commercial deficit with Canada is that they sell oil at a price below the rates of the global market. If we would let them buy their cheapest oil, they would be worse.
Wait here. The things we need would have become more scarce and faces. The Americans would be worse. And that is a victory because … why?
During the years of our alleged economic captivity, the US economy became the “envy of the world.“That's what Trump seems determined to free us.
@Jonahdispch
