Pre-Debate Reminder: Trump Wants to Destroy the Economy

One of the great A/B tests of our time proving the political bias inherent in the media is the classic braindead “how will you pay for it” line that is wielded against Democrats at rates far higher than it is against Republicans. Whenever the subject of helping poor mothers pay for baby formula crops up, a bunch of Very Serious People like CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash spring from the ether to credulously ask where the money to pay for that will come from, yet when the Pentagon gets its annual blank check, the war cheerleaders are silent as to how the taxpayer will avoid incurring that expense.

Which brings me to one of the biggest war cheerleaders on planet earth, Donald Trump and his plan to crash the American economy. Some may decry that as unnecessary hyperbole, but those same people probably have not put their money where their mouth is on this subject the way that Morgan Stanley and Barclays traders have, who placed bets on rising inflation and low growth–two of the three the conditions that create stagflation–as a hedge should Trump win the election.

The core of Trump’s plan to kill American business is his cockamamie idea to dramatically increase tariffs on goods coming into the economy. Every economist on earth knows that this tax gets passed down to the consumer due to the iron laws of capitalism, and thus raising taxes on imported goods is simply raising taxes on the people paying for those imported goods. It’s such an obvious notion that Trump does often get pushback on it from even the most braindead media pundits.

But because the core output of the mainstream media is stenography for the powerful and not journalism, Trump gets the last word, and he gets to set the terms of debate under their special set of rules for him. The New York Times took a dig at him today in “for Trump, Tariffs Are the Solution to Almost Any Problem,” but they do it in that classic Times-ian prose where they hedge what they’re saying to the point where they don’t really say much at all. Here’s how they describe Trump’s plan to raise everyone’s taxes:

Economists have been skeptical of many of these assertions. While tariffs generate some level of revenue, in many cases they could create only a small amount of the funding needed to pursue some of the goals that Mr. Trump has outlined.

In other cases, they say, tariffs could actually backfire on the U.S. economy, by inviting retaliation from foreign governments and raising costs for consumers. Economic research has indicated that the cost of tariffs tend to be borne by American businesses and households, rather than foreign companies.

Now contrast this to how the George W. Bush Institute describes them: “Tariffs Are Great – If You Like Raising Prices, Undermining Jobs, and Inhibiting Innovation.” The right-wing Cato Institute wrote that “Trump’s Tariff Plan Will Raise Prices for Consumers, Just as Bastiat Warned 170 Years Ago.” Just to cover all our bases on the establishment economic spectrum, here’s what the center-left-ish Brookings Institute wrote about Trump’s favorite excuse for how he will pay for his monstrous regime:

A literature review by the Tax Foundation found that U.S. consumers and firms bore the brunt of costs in the recent trade war, with some studies finding partial pass-through (the price increases, but not by as much as the tariff, hurting both importers and consumers), others finding almost complete pass-through (the price increases by the amount of the tariff), and a couple of cases of over-shifting (the price increases by more than the amount of the tariff). They did not find substantial evidence that foreign exporters absorbed the economic burden of the tariffs by lowering prices.

Does that sound like research “indicates” that tariffs “tend” to hurt American businesses and households? The NYT has an ocean of room between the “skeptical” stance they have taken in this debate preview piece and where reality is with Trump over this literal econ 101 concept. They even provide proof further down in the article of the reality they hedge against at the top, when they write “As president, Mr. Trump gave $23 billion to American farmers to help them offset losses [from tariffs],” and the “has indicated” hyperlink they include even goes to an article titled “American Consumers, Not China, Are Paying for Trump’s Tariffs.”

There are hungover 18-year-olds in class right now who already know more about this subject than Donald Trump does, and they are being graded harder on this subject by their professors than Trump is by the NYT in this article.

So I just wanted to write this as a PSA ahead of tonight’s debate, because I suspect that the media will let ‘ol donny wriggle out of this one yet again while we also get a maddening line of questioning to Kamala Harris about her plans to pay for ideas that don’t revolve around deporting millions of people in a murder-suicide pact with the U.S. economy. No matter what happens tonight or how it gets framed by outlets like the NYT, do not forget the fundamental fact that based on everything we know, Trump really wants to destroy the economy.