Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Unfit to hold office

President Trump told Fox News' Laura Ingraham that another round of trade measures equaling $264 billion in value was "ready to go" if Chinese authorities do not bend to U.S. demands for significant changes to China's trade policies. “I think that we will make a great deal with China, and it has to be great, because they’ve drained our country,” Trump told Ingraham. "[But] I have $267 billion waiting to go if we can’t make a deal,” he added.

  The Hill
Just last week, he in a Wall Street Journal interview, he said lied, "We don't have tariffs anywhere." And Breitbart, Trump's right-wing print enabler, backed him up:
“We don’t even have tariffs,” he said in the interview. “I’m using tariffs to negotiate. I mean, other than some tariffs on steel—which is actually small, what do we have? … Where do we have tariffs? We don’t have tariffs anywhere.”

That might sound shocking but Trump is mostly right on this.

The claim that we don’t have tariffs anywhere is an exaggeration–but only a small one. The U.S. has imposed tariffs on just under $300 billion of imports. Forty-seven billion, or around 15 percent, of those tariffs are on the steel and aluminum tariffs, which Trump mentioned. The bulk of the rest is aimed at just one country, China. The remainder are on individual products, such as solar panels and washing machines. A bit here and there for specific violations of U.S. anti-dumping laws. For almost all other imports and all other trading partners, Trump has not increased tariffs at all.

  Breitbart
We are in dark times.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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