Comment by throw0101a
4 days ago
> But they can't do this for much longer, inflation is the first sign, which is why Trump is raising tariffs.
Trump is raising tariffs because he thinks they are a good idea and has since the 1980s:
> “The fact is, you don’t have free trade. We think of it as free trade, but you right now don’t have free trade,” Trump said in a 1987 episode of Larry King Live that’s excerpted in Trump’s Trade War. “A lot of people are tired of watching the other countries ripping off the United States. This is a great country.”
* https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/trumps-tariff-str...
Trump's mindset is a 1980s NYC real estate guy (zero-sum, one-off games), which when applied to global trade, is basically mercantilist:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism
Meanwhile, in the real world, commerce is often non-zero-sum (both parties get something of value, i.e., "win-win"), and you play multiple rounds with each trading partner and reputation matters (rather than one-off, where burning your bridges could be an actual strategy).
Trump was talking about free trade in the 80s, not in increasing tarrifs, which is not free trade. In fact, it’s the complete opposite.
Trump is saying that nobody is doing free trade except America, and so we should stop being free. He’s had a tariff fixation for decades.