Trump told a business audience that he plans on wrecking the economy … Again. I’m “terrif”-fied!

I just listened to Trump talking complete nonsense about tariffs to Bloomberg News. It was a valuable opportunity in one sense only. He was forced to confront specific topics instead of the random noise you hear at rallies. Well … Sort of. Trump is the master of the “weave” technique of avoiding the question. That’s his term for what he does, not mine. Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait tried to keep him on topic but mostly failed because Micklethwait is a civilized person, and Trump is not.

There were a lot of horror stories that came out of his mouth, but my vote for the worst is what he wants to do with tariffs. Gaaakkkkkk! If implemented (and there is every reason to believe that he’s actually serious about doing that), it will do more to destroy the economy and the MAGA people who support him in the short run than any other of his misguided ideas. (There are worse things for the long run … such as destroying our alliances with America’s friends. But then, Russia and Putin are Trump’s friends and they are just giddy with glee about it.)

Let’s be clear. We tried this once. And economists will explain to you that it was one of the things most responsible for plunging the world into the Great Depression. It was called the Smoot-Hawley Tarrif of 1930. Recall please that this was the dawn of the Great Depression. After this act was passed, the economic catastrophe of the Great Depression really got into high gear. The MAGA mindset at the time almost immediately found themselves in breadlines to keep from starving. There is no reason to think that they would do any better if Trump repeated history. But for incomprehensible reasons, they still support him.

Full Disclosure: I know about this for two reasons. First, I took every undergraduate economics class offered by the University of Utah where I graduated. Second, Reed Smoot from Utah, the co-author of the act, was a high ranking member of the Mormons. If there was any real justice in these things, every Utah native would hang their head in shame at what Reed Smoot did to the country.

Although the Smoot-Hawley tariff was a sin and a crime, it would still be a pale shadow to what Trump tells us he wants to do. In one bombast, he said he would raise tariffs as much as 2,000 percent. Trump gets away with spouting such insanity because even his MAGA base knows that it’s only bombast and everybody thinks, “He can’t be serious.” Maybe he is. Who knows? But he did say that.

Trump bragged about his tariffs when he was in office. Here’s what the business channel CNBC said about that (source: Wikipedia):

“A May 2019 analysis conducted by CNBC found Trump’s tariffs are equivalent to one of the largest tax increases in the U.S. in decades. Studies have found that Trump’s tariffs reduced real income in the United States, as well as adversely affecting U.S. GDP.”

It’s truly discouraging to hear Trump lie and lie, and lie some more without being beat down with a few facts. What Trump’s tariffs did was wreck international trade and convert former friends into enemies. And give countries a reason to trade with Russia and China instead of the United States.

It’s said that Trump is so poorly informed in matters of economics that it’s possible that he has never read a book about it. Since Trump companies have declared bankruptcy four times, that could be true. But I disagree. I think he knows what he’s saying is an in-your-face lie, but he just doesn’t care.