Incompetent. Unfit. Impeach.

Twice on Thursday, President Trump made comments that conveyed a remarkable lack of familiarity with basic aspects of the American economy.

[...]

“You mentioned all the economic indicators are going up,” a reporter asked. “Why, then, is the — are U.S. deficits and the financial debt increasing at a time when the economy —”

Trump jumped in.

“Well, the trade deals won’t kick in for a while,” he said. “You know, number one, the USMCA” — the revised version of NAFTA that Trump’s administration negotiated with Canada and Mexico — “hasn’t even been approved yet. It has to go before Congress and get approved. Now, it should get approved quickly.”

Before NAFTA, Trump said, “we had huge surpluses with Mexico. With NAFTA, we have huge deficits. We lose $100 billion a year on trade with Mexico. Does that sound good? And this has been going on for many years. So I stopped it. I stopped it a lot.”

  WaPo

I stopped it a lot.

Trump took a question that’s obviously about the federal budget deficit and gave an answer that dealt with the country’s trade deficits. Both are deficits, sure, but they relate to each other in about the same way that a tuning fork relates to a dinner fork.

[...]

We could chalk this up to Trump mishearing the question were it not for the interview he gave to the New York Times a few hours later. Trump was asked if the tariffs he had imposed on China might remain in effect indefinitely even if the United States and China reached a broader trade agreement, as Trump hoped.

“Yeah, sure,” Trump replied. “We have 25 percent now on $50 billion. And by the way . . . that’s a lot of money pouring into our Treasury, you know. We never made 5 cents with China. We’re getting, right now, 25 percent on $50 billion. And then I was putting 25 percent at a later date, which date came and went — 25 percent or $200 billion.”

“Yeah, sure,” Trump replied. “We have 25 percent now on $50 billion. And by the way . . . that’s a lot of money pouring into our Treasury, you know. We never made 5 cents with China. We’re getting, right now, 25 percent on $50 billion. And then I was putting 25 percent at a later date, which date came and went — 25 percent or $200 billion.”

[...]

But, as The Washington Post’s Heather Long pointed out when Trump suggested in August that tariffs would pay down the debt, it’s not the Chinese paying those tariffs — it’s the person or company doing the importing.

[...]

All of this is admittedly better than the really bizarre comment Trump made during an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity in October 2017. Hannity tossed up a softball about the economy, and Trump took a swing.

“The country — we took it over and owed over $20 trillion,” Trump said, referring to the national debt. “As you know, the last eight years, they borrowed more than it did in the whole history of our country. So they borrowed more than $10 trillion, right? And yet we picked up $5.2 trillion just in the stock market. Possibly picked up the whole thing in terms of the first nine months, in terms of value. So you could say, in one sense, we’re really increasing values. And maybe, in a sense, we’re reducing debt.”

There is no sense in which rising stock market valuations reduces the federal debt. The way the federal debt is reduced is either by cutting federal spending or increasing federal revenue, including through raising taxes. As president, Trump has made overtures at the former and rejected the latter, meaning that the nearly $20 trillion debt Trump inherited has now topped $21.5 trillion.

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