Tariffs are a fool’s game for any economy with a sovereign fiat currency. The price of goods imported is not totally negative, nor is the price of exports totally positive. That is far too simplistic, but probably at the far end of Trump’s understanding of economics. Given that most of his base still believes that China pays the tariff it is not the political deal breaker it would be otherwise.

We get real goods made with real resources and labor from China, and we have to invest resources and labor into goods/commodities we sell to it. If we had a sane fiscal policy instead of anti-tax conservatives cheering for a 100% tax rate because politicians label it “a balanced budget” we could approach such nuanced issues with logic and math, something that has eluded our Congress for decades. Even Trump has stated often that “We make the money” but has yet to connect the dots.

Those goods that we get from China are purchased with pieces of paper (and keystrokes) we pull from our backsides. It’s hard to come out behind in that deal. We should probably not rock the boat. Workers were not harmed by imports nearly as much as the reluctance of business to share the spoils of the freewheeling trade policies that shipped their jobs out of the country. Had America lived up to its Constitutional mandate to create (coin) the currency for “the common welfare” and protected its citizens with half the fervor it protected its corporations, imports would have hardly been noticed.

Deficits never seem to be a problem for either party when tax cuts or subsidies are demanded by their donors. It’s only when the people ask for some relief from the very avoidable misery they live with daily, or someone mentions that our bridges and highways have become dangerous that deficit spending becomes the harbinger of the apocalypse for politicians. Congress could give every American 100% coverage healthcare with no premiums or added taxes and not put a dent in what they have lost over the last forty years of forced austerity and nonsense economics that makes believe that all monetary benefits must be derived via business and jobs, which is total BS.

America can “afford” anything that is for sale priced in dollars that Congress creates at will, including any excess labor the private sector rejects. Taxation and bond sales with a fiat currency, when debt is only denominated in the currency the central bank/Congress can create, are only inflation control, not “funding” for anything. Pretending otherwise only plays into class division and racism as people become watchdogs for “their” tax dollars going to “others” they don’t approve of. Sound familiar??

I’m not saying I have any insight into macroeconomics that is new to mainstream economists. Only that I am not a f’n liar and willing to use the ignorance of hard-working Americans about economics against them, allowing their inclination to equate the spending of the monopoly issuer of the nation’s currency with their own household budget process to frame any budget discussion. Every high-level economist knows this stuff, or is in the wrong field. However, it is much more difficult to “understand” that which threatens one’s livelihood, and most of them work for the financial sector which has grown by over thirty percent since ‘84.