Most People In The U.S. Oppose Trump's Renaming Of Lake Ontario

The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between August 28th and 31st of a nationwide sample of 1,592 adults (including 1,437 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.5 points for adults and 3.3 points for registered voters. 

The Negative Effects Of Trump's Tariffs

 

Donald Trump is waging war on the rest of the world - a trade war. He has imposed tariffs on almost every country in the world - ranging from 10% to 50%. And he's proud of it. He will happily tell you that he's winning that war - and that other nations have agreed to his tariffs (and that both nations benefit from them). 

But that's true only in his feeble imagination. His authoritarian ambitions may benefit from his crazy tariffs, but no one else benefits - not in this country or in other countries.

The tariffs are just a bullying tactic used by Trump to force other nations to bend to his will. They may agree temporarily to go along with the tariffs (to avoid even more onerous tariffs), but no one likes to be bullied. While they may not say it out loud, the nations that are the recipients of the tariffs have to be angry about it. 

They will now have less trust in the United States and its leadership. That's because Trump has tossed out economic agreements that benefitted everyone. Why should they now trust he will keep any new agreements? They shouldn't! He has demonstrated he will toss out agreements that he made (like the revised NAFTA agreement he made with Canada and Mexico) whenever he thinks he wants something better. 

And that's just with our friends. In the Third World, it's even worse. We had already damaged these nations by cutting off aid they received through USAID. Putting tariffs on them is just adding insult to injury. Why should they continue to support America's agenda when they get no aid or trade? Many will move into China's sphere of influence, because China will supply that aid and purchase their products.

But it's not just the rest of the world that is hurt by the tariffs. Most American citizens will also be hurt. While other countries may be hurt by the tariffs, it is American consumers who have to pay for those tariffs through higher prices for the goods they buy. The tariffs really amount to a huge new tax on Americans.

And it's a very regressive tax. It will not hurt the rich, who can easily absorb the higher prices (which make up a tiny portion of their massive incomes). But the middle class, the working class, and the poor will be hurt, because they will see inflation eat away at their incomes. And the less a person makes the more they will be hurt.

Trump may think he's winning, but no one else is - not here in this country or in other countries. The tariffs will make life harder for most people, but the billionaire narcissist doesn't care.

Trump Claims A Deal With China - It Is Not True

Once again, Trump is tooting his own horn. This time he is claiming to have reached a deal on trade with China. But as with most of his claims, it isn't true.

The two nations have only agreed on a broad outline of a plan to be negotiated. No plan has been approved or signed by either country - and it still could be quite a while before one is approved.

Trump did the same thing with Great Britain. He claimed to have done a deal with Great Britain on trade. But all the two nations did was agree on a broad outline to be negotiated. To this date, no plane has been agreed to or signed by either nation.

Trump has put tariffs on virtually every country in the world. He expected most to come to him on bended knee to agree to a trade plan that benefitted the United States. That has not happened.

Despite what Trump may claim, not a single trade deal has been approved, finalized, and signed with any country - NOT ONE!

Trump's economic policy remains a mess - creating chaos and confusion for businesses. Prices continue to rise, and shortages are on the horizon.

Anyone who thinks Trump is winning his worldwide trade war is living in a dream world.

China Is Holding The Best Cards In Trump's Trade War Game

 

There is a metaphor that Trump likes to use. It is about who "has the best cards" is a situation. He used it against President Zelensky in his White House meeting - claiming Zelensky had no cards.

When Trump initiated his Trade War against China by imposing massive tariffs on goods they import to the U.S., Trump ugly thought he was holding the best cards. He was convinced that China needed the U.S. market, and would quickly fold and agree to some tariff rate. He was wrong.

It turns out that China was not hurt by the tariffs as much as some thought they would be. While their exports to the United States have dropped sharply, they still have the rest of the world to buy their exports.

And China has an ace in the hole - and it may be the most powerful card in the deck (and one Trump had neglected to even consider).

China exports 90% of the world's processed rare earth minerals and magnets. And the United States needs those for semiconductors, medical imaging chemicals, cars, robots, offshore wind turbines, and a wide range of military hardware.

China not only responded to Trump's massive tariffs with high tariffs of their own, but they also immediately stopped all rare earth minerals shipments to the United States.

Trump than agreed to an agreement with China to lower the tariffs significantly and engage in trade talks. He thought that would get China to resume the rare earth exports. It didn't.

The trade talks continue. But the rare earth exports are still banned by China. China is smart. They know that's the best card they have to play - and they're not going to play it until they have a good deal (either no tariffs or very low tariffs).

Trump's trade war attack on China was a serious blunder. China is holding the best hand, and Trump is holding the losing hand.

Trump will eventually try to save face by claiming he forced China to agree to a deal that favors the United States. But it won't be true. He "doesn't have the cards" to do that.

Who Will Win The Trade War - Trump Or China?

Donald Trump unilaterally started a trade war with nearly the whole world. Currently, he has imposed a 10% tariff on nearly every country in the world - including some islands that are not populated with any humans (only penguins).

But the biggest trade war is with China, and it is the one that will likely affect Americans the most. 

Trump has imposed a 145% tariff on goods imported from China. He claims that China is negotiating with his administration to lower the tariffs.

China has retaliated by imposing a 125% tariff on goods from the United States. They have also banned the shipment of rare earth minerals and rare earth magnets to the United States - which are needed to make  many goods in the United States (including items for our military). And China has also cancelled purchases of agricultural products from the United States (like pork and soybeans). 

And China is denying that any negotiating is happening. I believe them.

China seems to have made the decision to just wait Trump out. They believe he will fold. And they have solid reasons for believing that. Trump has already backed down several times - including on electronics (like iPhones) made in China.

Trump likes to use an analogy of who is holding the best cards. In this situation, it looks like China is holding the best cards - including some Aces. Importing the rare earth minerals and magnets is critical, and the U.S. can't go long without them. Farmers had not fully recovered from Trump's first term tariffs on China, and this may be the end for many of them. And rising inflation is going to be a big problem due to the Trump tariffs.

Trump doesn't like to admit he made a mistake (and rarely does it). But he's painted himself in a corner with the ridiculous and unnecessary tariffs. He may try to paint it as a victory, but Trump will be forced to back down. The only other option is stagflation (rising inflation combined with a recession), which would be disastrous for his Republican cohorts and his own poll numbers (which are already dropping like a rock).

Trump is going to lose this trade war with China. Let's hope he gives in before he craters the U.S. economy.

Trump Blinks First In His Stare-Down With China

 

The orange bully in the White House thought he could bully China into doing what he wants. Although backing down on his "reciprocal" tariffs for other countries, he imposed a huge tariff on Chinese goods imported into the United States. And when China did not back down, he raised that tariff to a ridiculous 145%.

That means an import costing $10 would cost $24.50, and one costing $100 would cost $245. Trump thought the huge tariff would force China to beg for relief. They did NOT! Instead, they put a tariff of 125% on any American goods entering their country - making most American goods too expensive for Chinese consumers. It effectively cuts of the huge Chinese market for American producers.

The trade war stare-down was set. Who would blink first? It was DONALD TRUMP!

It turns out that nearly all of the electronics purchased in the United States are made in Asia - most of them in China. Those electronics (smart phones, TV's, computers, etc.) would be hit with the 145% tariff. And there would be no way for American consumers to avoid the massive price hike. They would have to pay the huge price tag, or do without!

It doesn't take a genius to figure out this was going to make Americans very angry. The U.S. public is already angry over continuing inflation (which Trump had promised to fix during the campaign). Such huge price hikes on electronics is guaranteed to hasten Trump's already declining approval with voters.

Realizing he has badly miscalculated, Trump backed down. He exempted electronics and computer chips from any tariff. 

Meanwhile, China is holding firm - and it doesn't look like they will back down anytime soon. Knowing they could be selling less of many things to the United States, they are shifting their view to other countries - especially the European Union. Other things China could do - refuse to buy any goods from U.S. farmers, restrict what targeted U.S. corporations could export from (or into) China, cut off the supply of rare earth minerals to the U.S., and devalue the Yuan.

It looks like China is in this for the long haul, and willing to accept some economic pain. Trump is not. He's already shown he'll back down when things get too hot.

Trump can't win this trade war. The only question is how much damage will he do to the U.S. economy before he realizes that.

Trump's Trade War With China Was A Massive Failure

While in the White House, Donald Trump started a trade war with China. He raised tariffs on Chinese goods, and said he would reduce or eliminate the trade deficit the U.S. Had with China. He then signed a trade deal with China to accomplish that. Sadly, both his trade war and trade deal with China were massive failures. The trade deficit with China was bigger than ever at the end of his term.

The following is from the editorial board of The Washington Post:

“It just doesn’t get any better than this," President Donald Trump proclaimed in January 2020 as he signed a partial trade deal with China. Mr. Trump heralded the pact as “historic” and “momentous.” He touted his dealmaking abilities for getting China to commit to purchase an extra $200 billion of U.S. products in the next two years.

The results are in: China didn’t buy anything extra from the United States.

The purchases of U.S. exports that China did make in the past two years barely got back to the amount China was purchasing in 2017 — before Mr. Trump started his trade war, according to calculations by Chad P. Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. U.S. exporters will never get back the sales they lost, and few have seen any meaningful growth in their sales to China under the “deal.” “The only undisputed ‘historical’ aspect of that agreement is its failure,” said Mr. Bown.

The main result of Mr. Trump’s bluster on trade was higher costs to the American public. Numerous studies have shown how tariffs were mostly passed along to American consumers, causing prices to rise on thousands of popular everyday items. It was a debacle that was easy to predict. Business leaders, economists and former trade officials from both parties warned the Trump White House repeatedly that the nation would have been better off without the trade war and the tenuous agreement that was ultimately reached with China (and not adhered to).

The smarter move would have been to keep the United States in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the big trade deal with other nations in the Pacific, including Vietnam, Singapore, Canada, Australia and Chile. The whole purpose of the TPP was to boost trade among other nations and lessen reliance on China, which was excluded from the deal. But Mr. Trump pulled out of the TPP in his first week in office, and other nations went ahead and completed the trade pact on their own. In an ironic twist, China is now petitioning to join.

It’s true that the pandemic didn’t help. The destruction of business travel, tourism and students studying abroad helped fuel a big decline in U.S. services exports to China. Some of the few U.S. industries to see exports to China rise significantly in the past two years were covid-19-related products, semiconductors, liquefied natural gas, corn, wheat, pork and sorghum. In the meantime, U.S. purchases on Chinese goods jumped last year as Americans spent heavily on home remodeling and home entertainment. Overall, 2021 was a record for the U.S. trade deficit, though that is largely a reflection of the strong economic rebound.

The United States has just learned costly lessons about the futility of trade wars and how China can’t be trusted to honor its deals. Now the Biden administration has to figure out how to hold Beijing to account for failing to fulfill its commitments. One conclusion ought to be clear: More tariffs are not the answer.

Trump Trade War With China Was A Complete Failure

Donald Trump, early in his presidency, decided the trade deficit with China could not be tolerated. He thought it was hurting the U.S. economy (it wasn't).

So, he decided to do something about it. He started a trade war with China by putting tariffs on most goods imported into the U.S. fro that country.

He told Americans that trade wars were easy to win, and his trade war would erase the trade deficit with China. He was wrong on both counts.

His trade war was bad for farmers, because they lost one of their biggest markets. China stopped buying from them, and found what they needed in other countries. It was bad for taxpayers, because the government had to replace the loos to farmers with government payments. It was bad for consumers, because they had to pay the tariffs (in the form of higher prices for goods).

The only entity not hurt by Trump's trade war was China. In fact, the current trade deficit with China is higher than it has ever been. They just kept exporting while Americans paid the tariffs for them.

Trump lost the trade war with China. To be blunt, it was an unmitigated disaster -- for the U.S., not China.

Trump Didn't Fix The Trade Deficit - He Made It Worse

Donald Trump said he was going to fix the trade deficit the United States had with other countries. But the only tool he tried to use was to impose tariffs on other countries (including China and many of our allies and best trading partners). This did noting to correct the deficit. It only made American consumers pay more for imported goods.

The imports kept coming (even though they cost more), but exports from the United States fell -- especially agricultural goods. Angered by the U.S. tariffs, China (and possibly some others) found new places to buy the goods they needed.

After his four years in office, and a ridiculous trade war, Trump has failed to eliminate the trade deficit. In fact, he hasn't even reduced that deficit. It is larger now than the day he was sworn into office.

The chart above (from Axios.com) illustrates Trump's utter failure to eliminate the trade deficit.

Trump Has Lost His Trade War With China

Donald Trump was not far into his term when he declared a trade war with China. He was boastful, telling Americans that a trade war was easy to win.

Well, he is now touting a trade deal with China (although it has not been finalized and signed). Unfortunately, the deal he is touting accomplishes none of the goals he said he would accomplish. In other words, he has LOST that trade war.

He will brag about the deal, and hope that Americans don't notice that he didn't get what he set out to get. He will hope that most people will just hear his boast and not see the truth.

But whether he wants to admit it or not, he lost -- and that has put this country in a worst position than before he declared that trade war.

Here is how Nobel Price-winning economist Paul Krugman describes Trump's failure in The New York Times:

Trade wars rarely have victors. They do, however, sometimes have losers. And Donald Trump has definitely turned out to be a loser.

Of course, that’s not the way he and his team are portraying the tentative deal they’ve struck with China, which they’re claiming as a triumph. The reality is that the Trump administration achieved almost none of its goals; it has basically declared victory while going into headlong retreat.

And the Chinese know it. As The Times reports, Chinese officials are “jubilant and even incredulous” at the success of their hard-line negotiating strategy.

To understand what just went down, you need to ask what Trump and company were trying to accomplish with their tariffs, and how that compares with what really happened.

First and foremost, Trump wanted to slash the U.S. trade deficit. Economists more or less unanimously consider this the wrong objective, but in Trump’s mind countries win when they sell more than they buy, and nobody is going to convince him otherwise.

So it’s remarkable to note that the trade deficit has risen, not fallen, on Trump’s watch, from $544 billion in 2016 to $691 billion in the 12 months ending in October.

And what Trump wanted in particular was to close the trade deficit in manufactured goods; despite giving lip service to “great Patriot Farmers,” it’s clear that he actually has contempt for agricultural exports. Last summer, complaining about the U.S. trade relationship with Japan, he sneered: “We send them wheat. Wheat. That’s not a good deal.”

So now we appear to have a trade deal with China whose main substantive element is … a promise to buy more U.S. farm goods.

Trump’s team also wanted to put the brakes on China’s drive to establish itself as the world’s economic superpower. “China is basically trying to steal the future,” declared Peter Navarro, a top trade adviser, a year ago. But the new deal, while it includes some promises to protect intellectual property, leaves the core of China’s industrial strategy — what’s been called the “vast web of subsidies that has fueled the global rise of many Chinese companies” — untouched.

So why did Trump wimp out on trade?

At a broad level, the answer is that he was suffering from delusions of grandeur. America was never going to succeed in bullying a huge, proud nation whose economy is already, by some measures, larger than ours — especially while simultaneously alienating other advanced economies that might have joined us in pressuring China to change some of its economic policies.

At a more granular level, none of the pieces of Trump trade strategy have worked as promised.

Although Trump has repeatedly insisted that China is paying his tariffs, the facts say otherwise: Chinese export prices haven’t gone down, which means that the tariffs are falling on U.S. consumers and companies. And the bite on consumers would have gone up substantially if Trump hadn’t called off the round of further tariff increases that had been scheduled for this past Sunday.

At the same time, Chinese retaliation has hit some U.S. exporters, farmers in particular, hard. And while Trump may quietly hold farm exports in contempt, he needs those rural votes — votes that were being put at risk despite a farm bailout that has already cost more than twice as much as Barack Obama’s bailout of the auto industry.

Finally, uncertainty over tariff policy was clearly hurting manufacturing and business investment, even as overall economic growth remained solid.

So Trump, as I said, basically declared victory and retreated. . . .

There will, however, be longer-term costs to the trade war. For one thing, the business uncertainty created by Trump’s capriciousness won’t go away; he is, after all, a master of the art of the broken deal.

Beyond that, Trump’s trade antics have damaged America’s reputation.

On one side, our allies have learned not to trust us. We have, after all, become the kind of country that suddenly slaps tariffs on Canada — Canada! — on obviously spurious claims that we’re protecting national security.

On the other side, our rivals have learned not to fear us. Like the North Koreans, who flattered Trump but kept on building nukes, the Chinese have taken Trump’s measure. They now know that he talks loudly but carries a small stick, and backs down when confronted in ways that might hurt him politically.

These things matter. Having a leader who is neither trusted by our erstwhile friends nor feared by our foreign rivals reduces our global influence in ways we’re just starting to see. Trump’s trade war didn’t achieve any of its goals, but it did succeed in making America weak again.

Why Does Donald Trump Love Tariffs?

 (Cartoon image is by Nate Beeler in The Columbus Dispatch.)

The tariffs imposed by Donald Trump have not worked. The U.S. trade deficit is larger than ever, and American consumers are paying more for the products they want. So, why is Trump sticking with his trade war? Why does he love tariffs?

Economist Paul Krugman (pictured) has an answer. Here is what he says about why Trump loves tariffs.

Almost exactly one year has passed since Donald Trump declared, “I am a Tariff Man.” Uncharacteristically, he was telling the truth.

At this point I’ve lost count of how many times markets have rallied in the belief that Trump was winding down his trade war, only to face announcements that a much-anticipated deal wasn’t happening or that tariffs were being slapped on a new set of products or countries. Over the past week it happened again: Markets bet on an outbreak of trade peace between the U.S. and China, only to get body slammed by Trump’s declaration that there might be no deal before the election and by his new tariffs on Brazil and Argentina.

So Trump really is a Tariff Man. But why? After all, the results of his trade war have been consistently bad, both economically and politically.

I’ll offer an answer shortly. First, however, let’s talk about what the Trump trade war has actually accomplished.

A peculiar aspect of the Trump economy is that while overall growth has been solid, the areas of weakness have come precisely in those things Trump tried to stimulate.

Remember, Trump’s only major legislative accomplishment was a huge tax cut for corporations that was supposed to lead to a surge in investment. Instead, corporations pocketed the money, and business investment has been falling.

At the same time, his trade war was supposed to shrink the trade deficit and revive U.S. manufacturing. But the trade deficit has widened, and manufacturing output is shrinking.

The truth is that even economists who opposed Trump’s tax cuts and tariffs are surprised by how badly they’re working out. The most commonly given explanation for these bad results is that Trumpian tariff policy is creating a lot of uncertainty, which is giving businesses a strong incentive to postpone any plans they might have for building new factories and adding jobs.

It’s important to realize that Trumpian protectionism wasn’t a response to a groundswell of public opinion. As best as I can tell from the endless series of interviews with white guys in diners — who are, we all know, the only Americans who matter — these voters are driven more by animosity toward immigrants and the sense that snooty liberals look down on them than by trade policy.

And public opinion seems to have become far less protectionist even as Trump has raised tariffs, with the percentage of Americans saying that free trade agreements are a good thing as high as it’s ever been.

So Trump’s trade war is losing, not gaining, support. And one recent analysis finds that it was a factor hurting Republicans in the 2018 midterm elections, accounting for a significant number of lost congressional seats.

Nevertheless, Trump persists. Why?

One answer is that Trump has long had a fixation on the idea that tariffs are the answer to America’s problems, and he’s not the kind of man who reconsiders his prejudices in the light of evidence. But there’s also something else: U.S. trade law offers Trump more freedom of action — more ability to do whatever he wants — than any other policy area.

The basic story is that long ago — in fact, in the aftermath of the disastrous Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930 — Congress deliberately limited its own role in trade policy. Instead, it gave the president the power to negotiate trade deals with other countries, which would then face up-or-down votes without amendments.

It was always clear, however, that this system needed some flexibility to respond to events. So the executive branch was given the power to impose temporary tariffs under certain conditions: import surges, threats to national security, unfair practices by foreign governments. The idea was that nonpartisan experts would determine whether and when these conditions existed, and the president would then decide whether to act.

This system worked well for many years. It turned out, however, to be extremely vulnerable to someone like Trump, for whom everything is partisan and expertise is a four-letter word. Trump’s tariff justifications have often been self-evidently absurd — seriously, who imagines that imports of Canadian steel threaten U.S. national security? But there’s no obvious way to stop him from imposing tariffs whenever he feels like it.

And there’s also no obvious way to stop his officials from granting individual businesses tariff exemptions, supposedly based on economic criteria but in fact as a reward for political support. Tariff policy isn’t the only arena in which Trump can practice crony capitalism — federal contracting is looking increasingly scandalous— but tariffs are especially ripe for exploitation.

So that’s why Trump is a Tariff Man: Tariffs let him exercise unconstrained power, rewarding his friends and punishing his enemies. Anyone imagining that he’s going to change his ways and start behaving responsibly is living in a fantasy world.

Trump Tries To Cover For Failure To Reach Deal With China

The Stock Market took a significant tumble on Tuesday after Donald Trump said he liked the idea of waiting until after the next election to reach a trade deal with China.

That was another of his thousands of lies. He had said several times that he was close to signing a deal with China -- even though China never said any deal was close. That had been enough to send the market up, because American businesses and investors want a deal to be done. They want the trade war to be over before it wrecks the economy.

The truth is that Trump would love to sign a deal. He do it tomorrow if he could. He's not the one delaying a deal. China is.

It has become obvious lately that China has decided to wait until the next election is over to get serious about any new deal. They think there's a good chance that Trump will be defeated in the next election, and a new president might end Trump's trade war on better terms for both countries.

Trump was just trying to save face with his comment about wanting to wait.

Trump's Claims About His Trade War Are All Wrong

Donald Trump has claimed that trade wars are easy to win, and he repeatedly claims that he is close to winning the trade war he started. He is lying.

In fact, every claim he has made about the trade war is wrong. In fact, our trade deficit with other nations is higher now than when Trump started that war with his tariffs. The following is part of an article about Trump's false trade war claims by Veronique de Rugy in The New York Times:

Mr. Trump and his team of unrepentant protectionists have made wild claims about what big tariff hikes and aggressive negotiating tactics will achieve. Let’s pick the top five claims. Have any actually panned out? The answer will not come as a surprise. (It’s no.)

Claim 1

Let’s start with an easy one. On March 2, 2018, when Fox Business Network’s “Mornings With Maria” asked whether China would retaliate against the metal tariffs, Mr. Trump’s economic adviser Peter Navarro replied, “I don’t believe any country in the world is going to retaliate for the simple reason that we are the most lucrative and biggest market in the world.” 

He was wrong: Everyone has retaliated against us. A recent studyby the economists Mary Amiti of the Federal Reserve, Stephen J. Redding of Princeton and David Weinstein of Columbia shows that our trading partners, “especially China, have retaliated with tariffs averaging 16 percent on approximately $121 billion of U.S. exports.”

Claim 2

The president said that tariffs are “a powerful way to get companies to come back to the USA.” Mr. Trump can’t do much more than point to anecdotes of companies relocating to the United States. But the broader trend tells a different story. Most companies can’t afford to shift their supply chains to use domestically produced parts or move their production back home. Data show that when companies move out of China, they’re relocating to other countries in Southeast Asia.

Even the Commerce Department acknowledges that companies face a tariff-related challenge when thinking about moving back here. Expect this trend to continue because the future of most manufacturing in America — including the automobile industry — is in exporting. Rising production costs in the United States means that to stay competitive, an increasingly large number of businesses will shift their production abroad.

The bottom line: It means fewer manufacturing jobs here than otherwise, not more.

Claim 3

On that same day that Mr. Navarro was talking nonsense, the president tweeted that “trade wars are good, and easy to win.” Wrong again. Instead, we found out that they are bad and difficult to wind down. We are nowhere near a trade deal with China. In fact, apart from a deal with South Korea, which required no congressional approval, no comprehensive and better trade deals are yet on the books, and most pending agreements are subpar when compared with what was agreed to in the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Meanwhile, the trade war has pushed our trading partners to sign trade deal agreements — not with us, but with one another. The list includes Japan and Europe, Europe and the Mercosur zone in South America, and Europe and Mexico. As Chad Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics documented, China’s tariffs against the United States rose to 20.7 percent on June 1, 2019 from 8 percent on Jan. 1, 2018 — but its tariffs against all other countries went down from 8 percent to 6.7 percent during that same period.

Claim 4

“Our great Patriot Farmers will be one of the biggest beneficiaries” of the trade war with China, Mr. Trump tweeted in May. Also wrong. Farmers have suffered on all fronts in this trade war. For starters, they saw their production costs rise thanks to the metal tariffs that increased the cost of farm equipment. 

Farmers have also been devastated by the retaliation from many countries. For instance, soybean exports to China will most likely — and perhaps permanently — be one-third of what they were last year. Exports of dairy products to China have dropped more than 50 percent, too. Obviously, if farmers did so well under Trump’s trade war, he wouldn’t need to provide them with $28 billion in aid.

Claim 5 

During his campaign, Mr. Trump said that he would wipe away the trade deficit. Aside from the fact that this is a foolish goal, his trade disputes have achieved quite the opposite. As my colleague Daniel Griswold documents, “During President Obama’s second term in office, from 2013 through 2016, the monthly trade deficit in goods and services averaged $40.7 billion; under President Trump the monthly deficit has averaged $50.1 billion.”

A reduction in the bilateral trade deficit is a meaningless measure of success because when one deficit goes down, many others go up. Case in point: The deficit with China is going down, but it has been more than offset by rising bilateral deficits elsewhere, including with Vietnam and Mexico. Imports from China are also down 12 percent, but exports to China are down 19 percent. So even by the president’s own mercantilist standard, he is failing.

The bottom line is that pretty much everything Mr. Trump has promised on the trade front by imposing tariffs hasn’t panned out, even if the president persists in saying the opposite.

Public's Worried About Trade War - Expects Recession Soon

Trump has bragged about winning the trade war, and also about how good the economy is doing. In fact, the economy remaining at least as good as it currently is could be Trump's only hope to be re-elected. But the public is not buying Trump's reassurances.

About 60% of the public is concerned about Trump's trade war with China (and a majority of every demographic group but Republicans) agrees with that concern. Also, an equal 60% of the population thinks there will be a recession soon (in the next year).

Those aren't good numbers for Trump, and it's likely why his job approval has dropped out of the forties (now only 38%).

These charts are from the latest Washington Post / ABC News Poll -- done between September 2nd and 5th of a national sample of 1,003 adults, with a margin of error of 3.5 points.

He Won't Admit It, But Trump Is Losing The Trade War

Donald Trump is convinced that he's the smartest man in the country -- smarter than all the economists who spend their lives studying economic policy. That's why he started a trade war and told Americans that winning it would be very easy.

All he had to do was impose tariffs on some other countries (especially China), and they would submit to his will. He couldn't lose -- except that is exactly what is happening -- he's losing!

We know that the tariffs are not being paid by those other countries -- no matter how many times Trump says they are paying them. Those tariffs are just another tax on American consumers, as they have to pay higher prices for the goods subject to a tariff.

But it's even worse than that. The trade deficits with other countries are not decreasing. They are actually growing larger. As the chart above (from Axios.com) shows, the trade deficit with China has increased by 23.3%. And China is not the only one.

The deficit with the European Union has increased by 23.9%, with Mexico by 26.7%, with Germany by O.04%, with Japan by 2.6%, with Italy by 13.8%, and with France by 8.5%. The trade deficit with the entire world has increased by 24.8%.

It turns out that Trump is not nearly as smart as he claims to be, and trade wars are not easy to win. In fact, Trump is losing this trade war badly, and there's no indication that will change anytime soon.

Trump Lied To The World Press About China Calling Him

“China called last night our top trade people and said, ‘Let’s get back to the table.’ So we will be getting back to the table and I think they want to do something. They have been hurt very badly but they understand this is the right thing to do and I have great respect for it. This is a very positive development for the world. I think we are going to have a deal.”

Those were Trump's words to the press at his G7 press conference. It didn't just come as a surprise to the reporters present -- China was also surprised! The Chinese Foreign Minister said no such calls were made.

Who was telling the truth -- Donald Trump or the Chinese government? Both have been known to lie when it suits their purpose. Well, unsurprisingly, this time it was Donald Trump. Here's what CNN reported:

Trump flashed signs of optimism this week that the trade war could be resolved, saying he's received calls from Chinese officials saying they wanted to restart talks. Though Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin insisted there had been "communication," aides privately conceded the phone calls Trump described didn't happen they way he said they did.

Instead, two officials said Trump was eager to project optimism that might boost markets.

Why would he lie about this? Because he was listening to the talk of world economies softening, and possibly slipping into recession, due to his trade war with China -- and he perceived that he was being blamed for the economic woes.

So what did he do? He did what he always does when he thinks he's in trouble -- HE LIED!

This should not have come as a surprise to anyone. Trump has lied more than 12,000 times since taking office -- an average of 13 lies for every day in office. The truth means nothing to Trump. He says what he thinks will make him look good, and whether it's factual or truthful is never a consideration.

Trump's G7 press conference was just one more example of his dishonesty!

Farmers Are Trump's Biggest Supporters - And Biggest Victims

(Cartoon image is by Dave Granlund at davegranlund.com.)

One of the craziest things about Donald Trump's trade war with China is that it has hurt his best supporters the most (farmers). Here's how Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman explains it in his New York Times column:

Donald Trump is unpopular, but he retains the loyalty of some important groups. Among the most loyal are America’s farmers, who are a tiny minority of the population but exert disproportionate political influence because of our electoral system, which gives 3.2 million Iowans as many senators as almost 40 million Californians. According to one recent poll, 71 percent of farmers approve of Trump’s performance — which is down somewhat from previous polling, but remains far above the national average.

Yet farmers are hurting financially. Investors are worried about a possible recession for the economy as a whole, but the farm recession is already here, with falling incomes, rising delinquency rates and surging bankruptcies. And the farm economy’s troubles stem directly from Trump’s policies.

This apparent contradiction — Trump is inflicting the greatest harm on the people who supported him most — isn’t an accident. Farmers’ past support for Trump was predictable: The demography and culture of (white) rural America make it fertile ground for politicians promising to restore traditional society, and especially traditional racial hierarchy. But farmers’ financial distress should also have been predictable: While rural America may dislike and distrust cosmopolitan elites, the U.S. farm economy is hugely dependent on global markets, and it has inevitably been a major victim of the Trumpian trade war.

The questions, looking forward, are whether farmers understood what they were getting themselves into, whether they understand even now that their distress isn’t likely to end anytime soon, and whether economic pain will shake their support for the man who’s causing it.

At one level, it’s not hard to see why farmers supported Trump. Hostility to nonwhite immigrants was central to his campaign, and such hostility tends to be highest in places where there aren’t actually many immigrants. So rural America, with its still tiny immigrant population, was a receptive audience for his fear-mongering. More generally, Making America Great Again — which was basically about setting back the clock racially and culturally — was a message that played well in places that still tend to think of themselves (and are told by politicians to think of themselves) as the Real America, as opposed to the big metropolitan areas where most Americans actually live.

On the other hand, while farm country may be notably lacking in ethnic diversity and feels generally distrustful of globalists, the farm economy is in fact deeply integrated with and dependent on world markets. On the eve of Trump’s trade war, America exported76 percent of its cotton production, 55 percent of its sorghum, half its soybeans, and 46 percent of its wheat.

Overall, U.S. agricultural exports are almost 40 percent of the value of farm production, up from just 15 percent circa 1970. Globalization hurt some parts of U.S. manufacturing, with particularly harsh effects on some small industrial cities. But the rise of China and the growth of world trade have been nothing but good news for farmers.

And here’s the thing: It shouldn’t have been hard to predict that Trumponomics would be bad for farmers. Trump’s desire for a trade war was out in the open from the beginning; protectionism is right up there with racism and anti-environmentalism as one of his core values. And a trade war was bound to hurt farm exports. Did anyone really imagine that China, an economic superpower with its own fierce nationalism, wouldn’t retaliate against U.S. tariffs?

So what were farmers thinking? My guess is that they let the will to believe override their judgment. Trump seemed like their kind of guy. He certainly seemed to share their dislike for urban elites who, they imagined, looked down on people like them. So they convinced themselves that he knew what he was doing, that he would win his trade war and that they would be among the victors sharing the spoils.

Even now many farmers seem to believe that the pain will end any day now, that Trump will soon announce a deal that restores all the old markets and more.

In short, farmers’ support for Trump should be seen as a form of affinity fraud, in which people fall for a con man whom they imagine to be someone like them.

And as is often the case in such frauds, the con man and his associates actually have contempt for their marks. . . .

So what will happen as the trade war drags on? Don’t expect farmers to suddenly exclaim en masse, “Hey, we’ve been had!” Real life doesn’t work that way. But they have, in fact, been had, and they may finally be starting to realize it.