Business leaders think Trump is all bluster. They’re badly mistaken.

  • 📰 washingtonpost
  • ⏱ Reading Time:
  • 76 sec. here
  • 3 min. at publisher
  • 📊 Quality Score:
  • News: 34%
  • Publisher: 72%

Business News News

Business Business Latest News,Business Business Headlines

He has been talking the same way about the economy for decades — and been very wrong the whole time.

Former president Donald Trump holds up a fist after speaking at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville on Saturday.

The conventional wisdom about Donald Trump is that he has no coherent policy agenda. He is transactional, impulsive and narcissistic. The 140 of his former staffersfull-page ad in the New York Times. It was an open letter “To The American People,” and its basic message should by now be familiar. It began, “For decades, Japan and other nations have been taking advantage of the United States.” The thrust of the letter is that the United States is crippling itself by spending on the defense of its allies while those allies prosper. His solution? Make “Japan, Saudi Arabia, and others” pay America to protect them and “tax” these nations, by which he means impose tariffs.

So far, the record has been clear. By Trump’s own key measure — the trade deficit — the tariffs against China (rather than contracted. Many studies have shown that these measures have cost American consumers tens of billions of dollars and have not altered China’s policies. A$500 billion annually, or around $1,700 for a typical middle-income family every year. In other words, they would stoke inflation.

There is a broader point to make here. The United States did something truly revolutionary after World War II. It understood that by underwriting international stability and helping other nations get rich, it would create a zone of peace and prosperity in which it, too, would thrive. That vision of enlightened self-interest has been at the heart of America’s engagement with the world for almost eight decades.

 

Thank you for your comment. Your comment will be published after being reviewed.
Please try again later.
We have summarized this news so that you can read it quickly. If you are interested in the news, you can read the full text here. Read more:

 /  🏆 95. in BUSİNESS

Business Business Latest News, Business Business Headlines

Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.

Anti-Trump business group Leadership Now calls on Biden to drop out of presidential raceLeadership Now, a pro-democracy business group opposed to former President Trump, issued a statement Wednesday calling on President Biden to drop out of 2024 race.
Source: FoxBusiness - 🏆 458. / 53 Read more »

Trump avoids ‘corporate death penalty' in fraud case, but his business will still get slammedIn a pretrial ruling last year, the same judge threatened to shut down much of the Republican presidential front-runner’s business by calling for the…
Source: NBCNewYork - 🏆 270. / 63 Read more »

Business leaders respond to attempted assassination of former President TrumpBusiness leaders and trade groups are responding to the attempted assassination of former President Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday.
Source: FoxBusiness - 🏆 458. / 53 Read more »