Plain bullshit

So...you're putting Walmart out of business?

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

UPDATE 01:46 pm:

Bloomberg’s top editor, John Micklethwait, repeatedly pressed Trump at the Economic Club of Chicago over his plans to impose a universal tariff on imports and his threats to use tariffs on American companies that outsource their manufacturing.

Micklethwait noted Trump’s plans would essentially halt trade with China, place at least a 10 percent tariff on European nations and have a drastic effect on the U.S. economy, where 40 million jobs rely on trade.

“That is going to have a serious effect on the overall economy,” Micklethwait said.

  

Got ketchup?

“It’s going to have a massive effect — positive effect. It’s going to be a positive effect,” Trump responded. “It must be hard for you to spend 25 years talking about tariffs as being negative and then have somebody explain to you that you’re totally wrong.”

What???!!! OMG.

Micklethwait noted that critics have said Trump’s tariff proposals for all imports would amount to a national sales tax, with $3 trillion worth of imports affected and companies passing on higher costs to buyers.

“That is just simple mathematics, President Trump,” he said.

“It is, but not the way you figured. I was always very good at mathematics,” Trump replied, suggesting higher tariffs would make it more likely for foreign companies to build factories in the United States.

Holy canole. They can't let him do more interviews.

UPDATE 05:40 pm:

Bloomberg Editor-In-Chief John Micklethwait did not take it easy on Trump, and it quickly became clear that the former president has no conception of the mechanics of or the potential ramifications of the economic platform he’s running on. Bluntly, the former president was incoherent when pressed with real questions about his policies.

Micklethwait spent most of the interview attempting to break Trump out of what the former president repeatedly referred to as “the weave,” his term for his rambling digressions — with ever-decreasing intelligibility — and general inability to focus on a given topic for more than a few seconds during his rallies and interviews.

[...]

The grilling exposed Trump’s total cluelessness with regard to his own economic policy, and led Trump to attack Micklethwait as biased.

  Rolling Stone

Of course. If you don't let him ramble on and praise him for it, you're biased.

When questioned about the specifics of his plan, and if he was aware of its pitfalls, Trump seemed ignorant of basic economic principles, insisting that other countries, not American consumers, would pay for the tariffs.

He seems ignorant of basic economic principles because he is.

Trump countered that he was “always good at mathematics,” and that high tariffs — and thus costs — would force companies to move production into the United States.

“That will take many, many, many years,” Micklethwait said, to which Trump replied that high enough penalties would make the move immediate as if companies could simply wand wave production plants, orchards, wineries, factories, and the like into existence.

And if other countries take up the slack in purchasing, companies might not care so much if they sell in the US. It's still far cheaper for them to manufacture in other countries.

At one point in the conversation, Trump, after speaking at length about rockets, reiterated his past assertion that he would nominate billionaire Elon Musk to his government and put him in charge of cutting wasteful spending and regulations. When asked by Micklethwait to give an example of how he would cut waste, Trump pointed to the remodeling of Air Force One.

[...]

Trump argued that his tariffs will lead Mercedes-Benz to start building in the U.S., arguing that now they build everything in Germany and their cars are only assembled in the U.S. [...] “They take them out of a box and they assemble them,” Trump said. “We could have a child do it.”