Comment by mrguyorama

The last time he did tariffs against China, he put a tariff on raw materials but not stuff made with that raw material.

It was cheaper to build your excavator outside the country than pay the tariffs on importing the materials to build the excavator here.

It was an objective failure. It also resulted in very smartly targeted payback that caused serious financial distress to a bunch of blue collar American food producers who sell a lot to China because the American market is literally not big enough (my state sells millions of pounds of lobster to China, those lobstermen still vote for Trump).

This is because Trump is objectively a fucking moron, and if you tell him "No, your idea is wrong because you don't know what you are talking about", he gives you the same "You're fired" speech from his damn television show, replaces you with a sycophant, and then does the stupid thing.

Any prediction that starts with "Trump will do the Tariffs in the way that requires second order thinking" is doomed to failure.