Friday, March 16, 2018

Trump Beat Economists to This One: His Completely New Justification for Tariffs



Sad the neocon Bill Kristol gets to look sane next to Trump. He writes:
Speaking at a Republican fundraiser Wednesday in Missouri, President Donald Trump criticized Japan for unfair trade practices, and offered this example:

"It's called the bowling ball test; do you know what that is? That's where they take a bowling ball from 20 feet up in the air and they drop it on the hood of the car. And if the hood dents, then the car doesn't qualify. Well, guess what, the roof dented a little bit, and they said, nope, this car doesn't qualify. It's horrible, the way we're treated. It's horrible."

No one familiar with Japanese trade practices or the auto industry seemed to know what the president was talking about. My colleague Michael Warren found video of a David Letterman gag from a couple decades ago, which involved dropping a bowling ball onto a car from the roof of a building. Perhaps President Trump conflated an episode on a late night variety show with international economic policy?

-Robert Wenzel 





3 comments:

  1. Trump has to know that such a test is ridiculous. I think he's following the Nixon strategy of making the other side(s) think he's a bit--or maybe more than a bit--crazy, so they think "who knows what he'll do?" With Nixon it was not believable, with Trump, much more believable.

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  2. This guy apparently build a billion dollar business empire. I am beginning to think most of that cash came from a CIA black budget somewhere just in case this Trojan Horse was deemed useful someday. Today is the day.

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  3. Reading the comments above, it is clear to me that Trumpistas are operating under a shared delusion that the man they support and voted for, on purpose, cannot be that shallow and stupid because they themselves do not fancy themselves shallow and stupid, and so they imagine that there is profound thinking behind Trump's words that happen to be far too unreachable for mere mortals.

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