(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



A Primer on Trump’s Fantasy Economy [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-04-10

The premise of Trump’s fantasy economy is that other countries pay the tariff, not us. Sounds too stupid to be true, but to him, he’s taxing another country.

Consider this quote:

“Our country was the strongest believe it or not from 1870 to 1913. You know why, it was all based, we had no income tax then in 1913 some genius came up with the idea of let’s charge the people of our country not foreign countries.”

On Air Force One on Sunday night, he said the following:

Donald Trump

00:03:34-00:04:20 (46 sec)

No StressLens

It's exactly because of this that we're gonna put tariffs and we've already put 'em on. It's not a question of we will, we're gonna put 'em on. And those tariffs next year will make us $1 trillion. In addition to the $1 trillion, thousands of companies are gonna relocate back into the United States. In North Carolina, already furniture people are starting to move back in. In, uh, Detroit and Michigan, which I won because of what I said, what I'm telling you, uh, car companies are starting to open up in Indiana, a big one is under construction, as an example, Honda, but they're moving in like nobody's ever seen this before.

Donald Trump

00:05:29-00:05:48 (19 sec)

Medium (1.514)

They moved a lot of it to China. And it's not sustainable. We're not going to do it. Now, we have hundreds of billions of dollars is pouring into our country on a monthly basis. It's pouring in. It's already started because I put tariffs on and eventually it's going to straighten out and our country will be solid and strong again.

Donald Trump

00:06:16-00:06:36 (20 sec)

Weak (1.493)

They don't take our cars. They don't take our food products. They don't take anything. And we take their cars, Mercedes, Volkswagen, BMW. You know, we take their millions of cars. They take no cars. They don't take our farm product. They don't take anything. Europe's treated us very badly. We put a big tariff on Europe.

Donald Trump

00:06:36-00:06:52 (15 sec)

No Signal (0.967)

Uh, they are coming to the table. They want to talk, but there's no talk unless they pay us a lot of money on a yearly basis, uh, number one for present, but also for past, because they've taken a lot of our wealth away and we're not gonna allow it to happen.

(He wants his back taxes.)

Donald Trump

00:09:48-00:10:09 (21 sec)

Weak (1.095)

I think there's not gonna be -- I don't think inflation is gonna be a big deal because, if you look at me, I took in hundreds of billions of dollars. This is not new to me. I took in, during my four year, hundreds of billions of dollars from China. And we also took in a lot of money from other countries, but in particular China because it was just getting started.

Trump is operating in his own fantasy economy in which the United States has historically not received its rightful price for fair trading in America. Trump’s fantasy tariffs are like the slotting fee in a supermarket or a carriage channel fee on a cable TV system, but on a global scale. Trump is out to renegotiate a better deal from all the other countries and is shrewdly using the “tax” to bring them under his thumb like some white shoe law firm. It’s Art of The Deal in Trump’s fantasy economy.

But of course everyone but Trump knows that we pay the tariffs. His belief that tariffs are a tax on foreign countries is so beyond the stupidity meter, his actions have been incomprehensible to the press and world leaders. Nobody can be that stupid, right?. But he is. And everyone fills in the blanks for his thinking. When he says he’s brought in billions of dollars from China and other countries in his first term, no one is really paying attention anymore to his ramblings. We fill in the blanks between the drivel to hear billions of dollars brought in from the tariff on China. But no, he literally meant China.

The only question is when Donald Trump will have his emperor-has-no-clothes moment when he explicitly says in public that other countries pay the tariff? How can anyone live down that level of utter stupidity?

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/10/2315756/-A-Primer-on-Trump-s-Fantasy-Economy?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/