The Donald Trump Score Card

An article about Trump's 16th century mercantilist view and his misguided perception that trade 'winning' is having a surplus over the other country..



Opinion: How to understand Trump’s trade policy: It’s about restricting imports
By Matthew Bey
Published: July 25, 2018 10:43 a.m. ET

How to understand Trump’s trade policy: It’s about restricting imports

excerpts:

"Making a mercantilist

Trump has been complaining about the U.S. trade deficit since long before he entered the political arena. As a guest on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in 1988, for instance, he said of U.S. trade with Japan: “It’s not free trade. If you ever go to Japan right now and try to sell something, forget about it. Just forget about it. It’s almost impossible. … They come over here, they sell their cars, their VCRs, they knock the hell out of our companies.”

Thirty years later, he’s still singing the same tune (albeit about China and smartphones instead of Japan and VCRs, and from the White House rather than on daytime television). For all of the criticism Trump has faced in the past for changing his position on issues, he has been nothing if not consistent in his message on trade.

It is quite clear that Trump’s definition of fair trade has to do not with the rules that govern trade but with the end result: If one side exports more than the other, it is winning."


"A focus on the domestic market

To that end, the White House has focused first on restricting imports. The issue is not about ensuring market access abroad, as Washington’s tariffs on steel and aluminum demonstrate. The Trump administration argued that restricting imports was necessary to boost domestic production and bring operations at U.S. steel mills up to 80% of their capacity, citing national security concerns. (At stake was economic and industrial stability — in other words, employment levels — not the capabilities of the U.S. military.)

And when granting exemptions from the tariffs, Washington entertained requests only from countries that had agreed to cap their exports to the United States. The Trump administration didn’t even flinch at the tariffs trading partners imposed on U.S. exports in retaliation because protecting domestic industry was the point of the endeavor."

 

An article citing Trump's misguided, zero-sum, real estate transaction view of trade.



What Donald Trump Doesn't Understand About Trade
Protectionism is bad for America, even if other countries don't retaliate (which they generally do).
Daniel J. Mitchell
Sunday, September 16, 2018

What Donald Trump Doesn't Understand About Trade | Daniel J. Mitchell

excerpt:

"Mr. Trump may be the first openly protectionist president since Hoover, but what Mr. Irwin finds most frustrating about him is that “he never really defines what a ‘better’ trade deal is. His judgment of trade comes down to the trade balance, which he uses as a sort of ledger, as a businessman would, rather than think more broadly about the national economic impact of trade.” It is impossible for every country to run a trade surplus, but “Trump thinks about trade in these zero-sum terms, about whether there’s profits or losses, and he views exports as good and imports as bad.” …He fails to see that in international trade, imbalances “aren’t an indication that one country is beating another, or that one is ‘winning’ and the other’s ‘losing.’ ” Mr. Trump’s rhetoric and vocabulary are “not the way economists think about trade at all.”"

 

Your View: Ashamed of ignorant Trump apologists, and they should be ashamed of themselves
By Steve Burse | Bristol, Tennessee
Nov 30, 2019 Updated Nov 30, 2019

Your View: Ashamed of ignorant Trump apologists, and they should be ashamed of themselves

excerpt:

"Most, if not all now know that Trump and his entire administration are corrupt as hell. They have made a mockery of our Constitution. They have defecated on everything that our country was built upon and has stood for more than 250 years. The Constitution explicitly opposes these kinds of actions and behaviors by our president: bribery and abuse of power. Witness after witness after witness confirmed exactly the same facts all while the White House obstructs justice by blocking as many witnesses with direct, first-hand knowledge from doing their duty as Americans and testifying before Congress. I cannot imagine what it really would take for you people to finally say, “Enough is enough.” It’s truly and deeply scary to think how bad it needs to get before you jump ship. I am ashamed of all of you. And you should be ashamed of yourselves. You are in direct opposition to everything that makes us American."

 

Trump says it might be better to wait until after 2020 election for a China trade deal
David Reid
Published Tue, Dec 3 20195:24 AM ESTUpdated 12 min ago

Trump says it might be better to wait until after 2020 election for a China trade deal

"LONDON — President Donald Trump said Tuesday it might be better to wait until after the 2020 election to strike a trade deal with China.

“In some ways, I like the idea of waiting until after the election for the China deal, but they want to make a deal now and we will see whether or not the deal is going to be right,” Trump told reporters in London, where he is attending the NATO summit. The U.S. general election is set to take place next November."

 

The Donald Trump score card: 10/10 for his comments to that idiot Macron


"President Macron’s recent comments that NATO was “brain dead” and countries could no longer rely on the US to come to their aid."

The Donmaster replies:

"Turkey responded by saying that he was brain dead which was interesting,” President Trump shot back. “I think that’s very insulting to a lot of different forces. It has a great purpose.”

“That’s a very, very nasty statement,” the US leader continued. “[France] have a very high unemployment rate.

“You look at what’s happened with the yellow vests …. they’ve had a very rough year. You just can’t go around making statements like that about NATO, it’s very disrespectful.”

Warming to this theme, the US leader warned he has plans to slap additional taxes on France in response to European Union tariffs.

“They have to shape up otherwise things are going to get very tough."



All hail the chief


‘Insulting’: Trump turns on bromance bud

 

Fixed that for ya...

 

Surprised to learn CNN only gets about 1 million viewers

So only 1 in 330 americans have any chance of seeing that

 

Trump statement during his NATO summit visit, December 2019:

“I can work with anybody. I’m a very easy person to work with. You wouldn’t believe it.”

 

The north lost 20 guys for every southerner, due to gross incompetence, and still won. The north even spent the entire war dragging heavy cannon through West Virginia to break the siege at Richmond, and they were only months away from ending the war if all else failed. The south never stood a chance, and the war was never about people, but money and land. The north won because slavery and cotton were both slowly being automated. Even if the south had won, their regressive ways would have merely ensured the north eventually invaded.

 

Wind vane Trump.

Trump now sounds protective of NATO, the NATO he has called obsolete, after Macron made a remark that was critical of Trump's criticism of NATO.

As usual, Trump insulted Europe as his plane was landing for a NATO summit in December 2019 by saying he was considering more tariffs on France.

Macron may need to arrange an even bigger military parade for Trump to resuscitate the bromance they once had.



Trump rattles NATO with 'obsolete' blast
By James Masters and Katie Hunt, CNN
Updated 1:25 PM ET, Tue January 17, 2017

Trump rattles NATO with 'obsolete' blast - CNNPolitics

 

"after Macron made a remark that was critical of Trump's criticism of NATO"

Are you kidding?

Think there is actually something wrong with you

 

Epic Trump apologist Lindsey Graham doesn't even have Sondland's name correct. He's been referring to him as Sunderland.

The alibis for Trump have dwindled to the desperation level. He supposedly didn't have control of his deep state members such as Giuliani and Sondland whom he selected, Sondland being a hotel mogul and million-dollar donor to Trump's inaugural. Trump is supposedly too incompetent to even understand a crime he orchestrated; therefore, he didn't commit it.



The Only Deep State Is the One Donald Trump Created
by Robert Tracinski
November 14, 2019 5:13 am

The Only Deep State Is the One Donald Trump Created - The Bulwark

excerpt:

"But the big blow to Trump’s defenders came when U.S. Ambassador to the E.U. Gordon Sondland realized that he was on the hook for perjury—having denied things multiple other witnesses had testified to—so he “revised” his testimony to admit that he had expressed a clear quid pro quo to Ukrainian officials, demanding political favors for Trump in return for aid.

This was such a blow that Lindsey Graham ended up speculating that Sondland (whom he keeps calling “Sunderland”) is now in cahoots with “Democratic operatives.”

So the new defense of Trump is that he has totally lost control, and his handpicked representatives, Sondland and Giuliani, have been running America’s Ukraine policy without either his knowledge or permission.

You can see why Republicans had to go this direction. To admit that Trump knew any of what was going on in his own administration is to admit that he is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors. Better just to conclude that he is completely incompetent and has no idea what’s going on."

 

Lindsey Graham: Did Gordon “Sunderland” change his story about the quid pro quo because he’s in cahoots with Adam Schiff?
Allahpundit
Posted at 6:01 pm on November 7, 2019

Lindsey Graham: Did Gordon "Sunderland" change his story about the quid pro quo because he's in cahoots with Adam Schiff?

excerpt:

"The point to bear in mind about Sondland as you watch Graham in the clip below (just a minute or so from where it picks up) is that he’s not a career bureaucrat. He’s not a “deep state” careerist who’s been lurking within the federal bureaucracy, just waiting to sting Trump in order to prevent him from dismantling NATO or whatever. He’s Trump’s guy. He made big money in the hotel business and donated big money to Trump’s campaign. As a token of the president’s gratitude he was named ambassador to the EU, a bit of swampiness that’s perfectly standard in Washington for major donors. It would be strange for a major Trump donor who continues to work for the president, who tried to protect Trump in his original testimony by denying that military aid was included in the quid pro quo, and who still has yet to accuse Trump of directly ordering the quid pro quo, to suddenly be working with pro-impeachment Democrats.

But Graham is a desperate man, willing at this point to accuse anyone of participating in a Democratic plot in the name of providing Trump with political cover. So here he is on Fox News last night, tossing Trump’s Ukraine point man, Gordon “Sunderland,” directly under the bus."

 

Does the moon go away when nobody is watching? Does truth cease to be real if everybody is tuning in to Fox?

 

Another Trump case is likely heading to the Supreme Court.


Trump loses appeal to block Deutsche Bank, Capital One from handing his financial records to Congress
Kevin Breuninger and Tucker Higgins
Published Tue, Dec 3 201910:29 AM EST

Trump loses appeal to block Deutsche Bank, Capital One from handing his financial records to Congress

excerpt:

"Trump’s lawyers have argued in multiple lawsuits that the various requests for his financial records have no “legitimate legislative purpose” and are being pursued merely as an attempt to embarrass the president for political gain.

That legal argument has so far failed to sway judges in New York and Washington and was similarly rejected by the three-judge panel in the Second Circuit.

Trump has defied calls to publicly release his tax returns and provided a variety of explanations for his failure to do so. He is the first president in more than 40 years not to voluntarily make his tax records public."

 

Another example.


With border wall contract, Trump faces corruption concerns
By Steve Benen
12/03/19 09:20 AM

With border wall contract, Trump faces corruption concerns

excerpt:

"On April 16, his company was covered on Fox News’ show “Special Report with Bret Baier.” The segment was used the next morning in another “Fox and Friends First” segment. On April 21, the news show “Fox Report” covered Fisher’s proposal, including a pretaped interview with him.

The pinnacle of that effort, though, came on Sean Hannity’s program on April 25.

There’s no shortage of examples of Trump making substantive decisions based on things he saw on Fox News, but this is ridiculous."

 

What Trump is doing with NATO and the European Union looks mostly like another handout to Putin. Trump is destabilizing anything Putin does not wish to have in his way. The hijacking of the Ukrainian natural gas business is another gift to Putin, who wants to pipe his gas to all of Europe by way of Ukraine. Putin must have a powerful hold on that Orange Dummy.

 

Gordon's million bucks went to Trump, not Adam Schiff.