“We were losing hundreds of billions of dollars with China. Now we’re essentially not doing business with China. Therefore, we’re saving hundreds of billions of dollars. Very simple.” Donald Trump
Why would Trump mouth such an obviously stupid statement, other than to maintain the lie to his MAGA base that tariffs are not import taxes?
The above Donald Trump quote during his Sunday “Meet the Press” interview with NBC’s Kristin Welker is alarming for too many reasons. It indicates Trump is living in a surreal world, ignoring the warnings from small businesses, and even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, that are literally terrified over the damage that his tariff war is already causing.
“Stopping the Steal” was an HBO documentary that described the January 6 uprising and Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s election. But the title is also a good description of Donald Trump’s attempt to justify his poorly though out tariff war on all 180 countries in the world that he maintains have been stealing from Americans and deserve the chaos it is causing.
It must be exhausting, having to maintain such falsehoods every time he makes public statements, especially economic untruths that are threatening to wreck the U.S. economy.
Bloomberg reports that because there are no agreements with anyone in the first 100 days, trade flows are shifting away from America. Canadian exports to the US tumbled while shipments to other countries soared. The Trump administration’s duties on Canadian steel, aluminum, autos and other products, as well as Canada’s retaliatory levies on a range of American goods, led to a large pullback in activity between Canada and its largest trading partner in March.
Canadian exports to the US plunged 6.6%, the biggest drop since the pandemic, while imports fell 2.9%. Canada’s exports to countries other than the US jumped 24.8%, however, almost entirely offsetting the decline in shipments to the U.S.
Most worrisome of all, Trump is becoming more incoherent in his speeches and interviews. He also claimed on Sunday, he did not know that as President he swore to defend the U.S. Constitution “from all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
Some of his pronouncements could be an act but it is an act that will cause sky-high inflation and the empty shelves that we have not seen since the COVID-19 supply shortages.
Why the lies? Mental health experts have said many of Trump’s actions are designed to create the chaos he needs to control his surroundings. He created a cabinet in his second term as dysfunctional and subservient as that of his family and real estate business.
Mary Trump, his niece and a Clinical Psychologist, wrote a book about her uncle. There is no understanding Donald Trump without understanding his “malignantly dysfunctional family”, according to Mary, in a 2020 Guardian interview with David Smith about her best-seller, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.
It was a family patterned after Trump’s father, Fred, Sr., that was “a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse” that Donald Trump grew up in, said Mary Trump.
She also told The Current guest host Mark Kelley it has resulted along with being "fairly unstable and easily manipulated," the president's ability to "destroy alliances, rip up treaties and be in control of an enormous nuclear arsenal" has made him a "very dangerous" leader.
Paul Krugman, who won his Nobel Prize for original research on foreign trade, has said, “The best bet, then, is that the trade war will proceed, even intensify. There will be some winners, at least in terms of global influence, including China, which gains from America’s loss of credibility, and the European Union, which unlike Trump’s America can be trusted to honor its agreements. The United States will be a big loser, both politically and economically.”
So the question Americans must answer if we are to save our economy, how much longer are we willing to live in such chaos?
Harlan Green © 2025
Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen
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