Trump tweets: 'Trade wars are good, and easy to win'

[demmiblue]

Source: Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A day after announcing steep tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum, U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted on Friday that“trade wars are good, and easy to win”.

Trump said on Thursday that the United States would apply duties of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on aluminum to protect U.S. producers, although White House officials later said some details still needed to be ironed out.

“When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win,” Trump’s tweet read.“Example, when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don’t trade anymore-we win big. It’s easy!”

Fears of an escalating trade war triggered selloffs on Wall Street and in Asia and Europe, hitting the share prices of steelmakers and manufacturers supplying U.S. markets particularly hard.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-trump/trump-tweets-trade-wars-are-good-and-easy-to-win-idUSKCN1GE1E9?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=5a9935c304d3014498e7867b&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter

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Link to tweet

[Freedomofspeech]

1. Does he never sleep?

What a dick.

[joshdawg]

4. A brain-dead-stupid dick!

[Stuart G]

16. Well said...so stupid he doesn't know he is stupid.

[paleotn]

6. Too doped up to sleep.

[Hav]

2. It's amazing

It's amazing that he can portray himself as a business genius, yet he still hasn't understood what a trade deficit is and apparently no one has told him yet. Either that or he thinks his followers are really dumb.

[Yonnie3]

3. I guess that is an imperial "we" in the tweet

We, meaning him, will "win"; We, the US citizens and residents will lose. He has made a narrow definition of win.

Any one remember Nixon issuing an executive order freezing wages and prices? I recall the gasoline rationing very well. Although it wasn't about trade (it was about inflation) it is akin to this tariff. They think, if they don't like the data, make a rule directly affecting it rather than address the underlying issues.

[bucolic_frolic]

5. Cute and Easy

Trump's Simpleton Mind at work

A stable genius sees the world as cute and easy?

Really really demented and very uninformed

[forgotmylogin]

26. Easy as the Healthcare bill.

Which he was planning to accomplish the first day, nay, probably the first hour of his Presidency.

SEVERAL MONTHS LATER

"Now, I have to tell you, it's an unbelievably complex subject," he added. "Nobody knew health care could be so complicated." --Donald J. Trump

Nobody. Except for every single politician previously in the history of healthcare who came before him.

[Vinca]

7. Big problem - a "certain country" holds most of our debt.

I imagine Don is planning to have us declare bankruptcy.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

14. He is on record saying imbecillically he might make the US pay 70 cents on the dollar of debt.

[tblue37]

18. He always stiffed his contractors by paying only part of what he owed, so he figures that's

the right way to handle owing money.

[OnlinePoker]

22. Not necessarily "most" of the debt, about 5% of it.

Total debt is near $21 Trillion, China holds $1.18 Trillion and $1.06 Trillion.

http://ticdata.treasury.gov/Publish/mfh.txt

By contrast, Social Security alone (as of 2016) holds $2.8 Trillion. Here's a good breakdown on it. Of particular note is this section "...if you add up the debt held by Social Security and all the retirement and pension funds, nearly half of the U.S. Treasury debt is held in trust for your retirement. If the United States defaults on its debt, foreign investors would be angry, but current and future retirees would be hurt the most."

https://www.thebalance.com/who-owns-the-u-s-national-debt-3306124

[paleotn]

8. So "winning" is increasing the manufacturing cost

...for US producers of a wide range of products that include steel and aluminum components, making domestic manufacturing even less competitive globally. Of course, that's not counting retaliation by our trading partners, so higher costs for steel and aluminum components may be a mute point.

If the "tariff" only applies to unfinished steel, companies may be incentivized to shift additional manufacturing overseas, taking advantage of now, artificially low component costs and ship the finished goods to the US, to be sold by minimum wage retail staff. More "winning!"

Free trade, fair trade, protectionist, no matter our ideology, the economy is what it is. And the things we buy will now cost more thanks to a drugged up, dumb ass, with serious self esteem issues.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

15. Dingle Don w his degree in economics seems to think the Great Depression was "winning".

The Depression was caused in large part by the Smoot-Hawley Act which turned a stock market decline into a hole the country had great difficulty getting out of. It imposed duties and tariffs on 20,000 goods and international trade shriveled drastically as a result.

[ProfessorGAC]

9. What A Moron

This is the whole problem with everything that has gone on in the last 18 months.

A campaign based upon "we used to be good, but now we suck" (how patriotic) is now followed up by "we still suck and the only way we can win is by starting a fight".

Somehow, while maintaining status as the world's most powerful economy we suck so bad we need a trade war?

But, the lapdogs will eat it up because they're too dumb to remotely grasp the consequences.

[rurallib]

10. it's all black and white to him with simple answers to every question

Most of the answers are supplied by presidential advisors Sean Hannity, Steve Doocey and Brian Kilmeade.

[displacedtexan]

21. How will the American worker like paying more for beer, cars and...

...baseball bats? Trump's stupidity doesn't exactly fall into the category of "standing up for the American worker," in my opinion.

[TranssexualKaren]

25. Your choice

A terrible leader who does the right thing for the wrong reasons or a good leader who does the wrong thing for the right reasons (Obama’s TPP)

[eggplant]

23. Wait, what?!?

Trump stands up for American workers? On what planet?

[TranssexualKaren]

24. Yes, but.....

Of course he doesn’t care about American workers, but perhaps the current meltdown in the White House (the only plausible explanation for this) can offer a chance at some more rational trade policies if we’re smart enough to see past our hatred for Trump.

[djacq]

12. The Orange Clown wants to gamble with our economy

[Nitram]

13. He did it just because he could. He is easily bored, likes to stir things up and show off.

Makes no difference what the issue is or what the probably outcome will be. He thrives on the attention. "Will he or won't he? Oh, my god! He did!" He can't be happy about how it affected the stock market. Just a big naked blob of ID.

[tblue37]

17. How long before he says, "Who knew trade policy was so complicated?" nt

[dalton99a]

19. Fucking moron

Professor Kelley told me 100 times over three decades that “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddam student I ever had.” I remember his emphasis and inflection — it went like this: “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had.” Kelley told me this after Trump had become a celebrity, but long before he was considered a political figure. Kelley often referred to Trump’s arrogance when he told the story that Trump came to Wharton thinking he already knew everything.

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/former-wharton-professor-trump-was-dumbest-gddam-student-i-ever-had

[sinkingfeeling]

20. Get ready for millions more to apply for SNAP, unemployment, and

stock broker suicides as 45* crashes the humming economy.

[Rollo]

27. What can one expect from a meth-head president?

The Bloatard has tweaked a path to national destruction.

[Paladin]

28. All those years of saying "I've got a 6-inch cock" helped trump say that. (nt)

Trade wars are easy? In what universe?