LOL, On Her Recent Visit to the White House Merkel Showed Trump Statistics

Financial Times columnist Wolfgang Münchau correctly notes:

Mr. Trump... has a problem with German cars... He seems obsessed with them.

The Münchau implication being that Trump may soon impose tariffs on German cars imported into the United States.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is also aware of Trump's fixation.

During her visit last week to the White House, the Chancellor showed the president statistics demonstrating that the number of cars exported by German manufacturers from the US to the rest of the world is larger than the number of cars that the US imports from Germany.

But it is wrong to think that a Trump obsession can be derailed by logic or reality.

In dealing with Trump, Merkel's statistical real-world trade lesson likely went over about as well as a discussion would have with Trump about Godel's theorems and their implications for bitcoin.

My bet is Trump's eyes glazed over. He is obsessed with only one number when it comes to Germany (and most other countries). It is a silly number but still it is the number the stable genius has in his mind: the trade balance number.

Trump is fixated on the trade deficit of $64 billion that the United States has with Germany.

Murray Rothbard has explained how silly it is to focus on trade deficit numbers but this is where the President's mind is stuck.



-Robert Wenzel