As we have noted for years, President Trump appears to have little understanding of trade and trade policy, even though it is an animating element of his presidency. As the trade war with China has heated up, the president’s itchy Twitter finger has been busy with a fusillade of false or misleading tweets. Whether the president knows these claims are untrue is unclear, but the overall effect is to create a distinct winner-takes-all narrative for his trade policy. Here’s a quick tour through some of the major themes.
The U.S. is a loser
“We have lost 500 Billion Dollars a year, for many years, on Crazy Trade with China. NO MORE!”
— Tweet, May 10, 2019
This is the Rosetta Stone of the president’s trade philosophy — that the United States has been ripped off by other countries for years. It’s a view he expressed in full-page newspaper ads that ran in 1987, though then the main target was Japan.
But Trump consistently gets two things wrong here.
View the complete May 15 article by Glenn Kessler on The Washington Post website here.