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So why is Trump doing this?
For the spectacle and quick "Winning!" which he hopes will boost his "ratings" and standing.
But also, for the same reasons Dems have been doing it before, and Biden did just recently, when not only he didn't cancel Trump's tariffs, but added some new ones ("targeted," of course) - because certain segments of trad Dem constituency, like unions, are attracted to protectionism, and because it also perfectly fits Trump's fake "populism" and "America First" themes - his guru on this issue was lifelong Democrat Prof. Peter "Don't call it a trade war!" Navarro. It doesn't matter that the math or policy doesn't work - it worked/works politically for him, and that's all that matters to him.
It also made it difficult for Dems to explain why "Trump's tariffs are bad" when it's a policy they've been associated with all along.
www.yahoo.com - How Trump wins from his damaging trade wars - YFin, 2024-02-09
|------- The former president promised to boost American manufacturing through import tariffs and other protectionist measures, and it didn't work. Yet the voters Trump was appealing to rewarded him anyway, according to a new study by prominent trade economists. That may explain why Trump now says he'll intensify his trade wars if elected to a second term.
... Trump's first trade war helps explain why. The study, by economists David Autor, Anne Beck, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson, found that Trump's China tariffs did more harm than good to the US economy. Yet they boosted political support for Trump in key parts of the country. Whether through Trump's hucksterism or some other machination, voters seemingly embraced a policy that helped nobody and hurt some.
The study has three conclusions: First, the Trump tariffs produced no boost in manufacturing employment. Second, China's retaliatory tariffs reduced US agricultural employment. Third, Trump's farm bailout helped offset some, but not all, of the job losses in agriculture.
The Tax Foundation, for instance, finds that Trump's tariffs lowered US employment by 166,000 US jobs, with retaliatory tariffs killing another 29,000. The higher taxes paid by importers, meanwhile, amount to $74 billion in increased government revenue over a decade. Contrary to Trump's insistence, however, it's not China paying those higher taxes. It's American firms that import the products, pay the tax and pass the higher costs onto consumers.
The tariffs worked to Trump's advantage anyway.
... "The trade war appears to have been successful in strengthening support for the Republican party," the study concludes. "Residents of tariff-protected locations became less likely to identify as Democrats and more likely to vote for President Trump. Voters appear to have responded favorably to the extension of tariff protections to local industries despite their economic cost."
... The Autor study proposes two possible reasons Trump gained politically from tariffs that didn't really help anybody. The first is that "voters were misinformed about the employment impacts of the trade war." Trump certainly did his best to misinform voters. He called the two-way tariff escalation an "amazing deal" and a "momentous step" and repeatedly bragged about a manufacturing resurgence that never happened.
... Or, Trump made a deliberate and cynical show of trying to help, knowing it wouldn't matter. Sometimes, telling voters what they want to hear might be enough.
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Because of general economic illiteracy and the allure of fake populism, often [both] parties choose "good politics / bad policy" over "good policy / bad politics."
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The key is here:
FTA: |------- Trump's fascination with autocrats generally and Putin in particular has been well documented for more than a decade. In 2013, he posted on social media that his hosting of a beauty pageant in Russia might win him Putin's approval.
"Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow - if so, will he become my new best friend?" he wrote.
That was followed by years of attempts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow - an effort that continued straight through his first run for president in 2016, it came out later. Trump asked for Russian help to defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton that year, and then knowingly used the hacked and stolen emails that Russian spies released during the final month of the presidential campaign.
Then, as both special counsel Robert Mueller and the Senate Intelligence Committee investigated Russia's role in his victory, Trump eagerly bought into a conspiracy theory concocted by Russian operatives that - contrary to the U.S. intelligence assessment that Russia helped Trump win in 2016 - it was actually Ukraine that had tried to help Clinton win.
Trump sent his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to Ukraine to collect evidence - an effort that ultimately led to Trump's attempt to extort Zelenskyy into announcing an investigation into the Democrat he most feared in the 2020 election, Joe Biden, using U.S. military aid as leverage. Trump was ultimately impeached for that act, but the Republican-led Senate declined to remove him from office.
Trump's personal antagonism toward Zelenskyy, perhaps stemming from that episode, seems to have continued unabated...
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To paraphrase Corleone, for Trump "It's not just 'business,' it's personal."
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