Conservative Group: Trump’s Tariffs Would Cost Us $3.9 Trillion, Be the ‘Biggest Tax Hike Since At Least the 1980s’
Photo via Wikimedia Commons
It is humorous watching conservative groups who ostensibly support most of Trump’s agenda based on incoherent interpretations of reality recoil when his lies come into contact with their bank accounts. All of a sudden tariffs are clearly taxes on Americans and the old coot doesn’t know what he’s talking about. This is probably the one lie that Trump has not been able to get over on the right, and the American Enterprise Institute, famed hater of all taxation, also hates Trump’s plan to add a 20 percent tariff on everything coming into the country.
“It would be like any other tax increase. It will have a negative impact on growth and employment and also hurt U.S. exporters.”
– AEI’s @kpomerleau quoted on CNBC’s SquawkBox on the potential economic impact of Trump’s proposed tariffs pic.twitter.com/ggp7hlDdF6
— AEI Economics (@AEIecon) October 22, 2024
This $3.9 trillion figure is supported by the nonpartisan center-right-ish Tax Foundation, as their analysis of his tax plan estimates the United States will lose $3 trillion in revenue over ten years, with a meager 0.8 percent long-run GDP and wage growth. Trump’s plan is utterly delusional, and it will greatly hurt the economy. This is clear as day.
The sky is blue. Water is wet. And tariffs are taxes. We know this because, well, that’s what words are—but also for the Trumpers who really struggle with that concept, we also know this because Trump was the president of America once upon a time, and he enacted tariffs that those commies over at CNBC analyzed and found to be “one of the biggest tax increases since 1993.” Ross Pomeroy detailed another analysis for Splinter a few weeks ago and summarized that it found “Trump’s tariffs ultimately backfired because input costs – what it costs to actually make things – rose.”
No one who supports Trump gets to pretend his supersized 2024 plan does anything other than what it has proven to do when the freaking AEI is writing killer talking points for the Democratic nominee in late October. The math is crystal clear: Trump’s broad-based tariffs do not bring in anywhere near enough revenue to offset, let alone justify, their immense costs.
There is something called a Trump trade in the markets, and has been for some time, as large firms are betting that Trump’s tariffs and racist and authoritarian immigration policies will create inflation and low growth, two of the three elements of stagflation (high unemployment being the third), literally the worst thing that can happen to an economy and once thought impossible until the 1970s proved otherwise.
Trump trades:
– Dollar debasement
– Private prisons
– Private equity
– Payday loans
– Shorting clean energy
Great future we’re predicting here guys— Lily (@nope_its_lily) October 22, 2024
Every Trump supporter is voting for a massive tax hike on themselves and everyone else. This is an inescapable fact of life, and the fact that so many are still voting for Trump because they think he’s good at managing the economy is proof of how little facts have an impact on their lives. Conservatives reside in a bubble that feels impenetrable sometimes. Trump promises to reach through it and into their wallets to make them really feel the consequences of their actions, just like he did before.