Tariffs are Taxes, Stupid

The Wall Street Journal went on the record yesterday: "Tariffs are taxes . . . Car prices will rise by thousands of dollars, including those made in America."

Mike Pence said on social media: “The Trump Tariff Tax is the largest peacetime tax hike in U.S. history. These tariffs are nearly 10 times the size of those imposed during the Trump-Pence administration and will cost American families over $3,500 per year.”

CNBC “Closing Bell” co-anchor Jon Fortt: “The market reaction after hours ― I’ve never seen anything like it.  This ― I think, fair to say ― is worse than the worst-case scenario of the tariffs that many in the market expected the president to impose.”

JPMorgan offered a grim outlook in its daily economic briefing following Trump's tariff announcement:  "These policies, if sustained, would likely push the U.S. and global economy into recession this year . . .  We view the full implementation of these policies as a substantial macro economic shock not currently incorporated in our forecasts."

In his rambling remarks lasting nearly an hour, Trump hailed his new tariffs as “Liberation Day” for the country and once again repeated his false claim that foreign countries, rather than Americans, would be paying the new tariffs. “We took in hundreds of billions of dollars from China in tariffs,” Trump said. “I took in hundreds of billions of dollars in my term, hundreds of billions. They never paid ten cents to any other president, and yet they paid hundreds of billions.”  That is an outright LIE.

Trump was told repeatedly by his own economic experts during his first four years in office that U.S. tariffs are paid by American importers, meaning the tariffs on Chinese goods he boasted about were coming out of the pockets of American consumers. Whether he is intentionally lying or truly believes that he is correct and all his economic experts were wrong is unknown, but he has continued with that falsehood to this day.

But that shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, since the worst kept secret is that Trump is a fucking idiot.  Trump wrote social media posts in which he suggested that tariffs imposed on Canada would somehow raise the price of fentanyl being brought into the United States — even though drug smugglers are not known to declare their illegal contraband at customs in order to pay the duty.