The Witness Chronicles, September, 27, 2024
Tariffs explained, corruption in NYC, and Vance’s duplicity
Tariffs, Corruption, and the Massive Hypocrisy of JD Vance
All the ugly is surfacing
I’m going to start with the nonsensical idea of imposing trade tariffs as an economic policy, Trump’s brilliant and utterly cynical idea. The way they work is a tariff is placed on a category of goods being imported from a foreign country, in this case, China.
An example would be the current 100% tariff on Chinese made electric vehicles, effectively doubling their cost for American consumers. This was done because China was flooding the market here with extremely low cost cars in a concerted effort to destroy US carmakers. They were willing to sell EVs at a huge loss to gain market share and dominance.
So, the tariff was imposed to protect US business interests, not as a source of income for the government. If you chose to buy a car with the tariff, you would pay the tariff, not the Chinese government or company. The tariff was designed to punish them by eliminating the artificial price advantage.
This is how tariffs are supposed to work. But in the Trump campaign’s weird economic logic, they act as though tariffs are a source of revenue, basically a tax on Chinese goods and that the money would flow to government coffers, offsetting the need for more taxes.
The problem is we, American consumers, would be the ones paying that extra money, effectively turning the tariff into a tax on us. And it’s a tax that hits middle and low income Americans the hardest because these purchases take up a much larger chunk of our income relative to wealthier folks.
The cynicism of this is appalling because their economic policy is dependent on the assumption that we are all too stupid or too lazy to understand how this works. Frankly, I’m not even sure Trump has a clue how it works. He seems to think it would generate so much revenue, overnight, that it would end the deficit and make us all richer.
Honestly, if this was true we would have done it years ago, everyone else would have followed, and the global economy would have been destroyed.
The brilliance of it all is blinding. That’s my take on the tariff nonsense.
Now, on to corruption and this time it is a prominent Democrat, Mayor Eric Adams of New York City, who has been indicted on five very serious charges of corruption, including taking large sums of money and gifts from a foreign country, something I see as akin to treason.
Apparently he has been doing this stuff for years, dating back to before being mayor, and it was an open secret in NY’s notoriously crooked political system (to be clear, I live in western NY and love NYC). Corruption has never been limited to one political party or ideology. It is pervasive when a weak human holds power and it is practiced at the highest levels. No excuses Mr Mayor. Get out.
And now this morning’s story (9/27/24) about the hypocrisy of vice presidential candidate JD Vance, the least popular major political figure in living memory. The Washington Post reports that in 2020 Vance sent emails to an acquaintance talking about how Trump has accomplished nothing during his presidency and predicting Trump would lose that year.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/09/27/jd-vance-messages-trump-criticism-2020/
Which, of course, he did. And now Vance is extolling the virtues of Trump’s massive accomplishments while in office. Really JD?
This took place in 2020 after Vance claimed to have seen the light and converted to Trump worship after belittling everything Trump was back in 2016.
The person who received these emails shared them with the Post anonymously because they fear retribution. Gee, I wonder why? Of course the Trump campaign spokesperson said the anonymous source meant they were not a story then shifted to some nonsense about tariffs (see above).
The reality of these things is that we have to keep ourselves informed when we elect people to high office. The temptations of power are so enticing that people will lie, change positions on important topics, and betray our trust to acquire it. On both sides of the fence.
I make no excuses for Eric Adams and I am glad the Justice Department under Joe Biden was able to go after a corrupt member of our party, as they should. No one is above the law, despite what the Supreme Court majority ruled.
But, at the national level, the hypocrisy and corruption in this election is strikingly all one side, that of the Republican Party under Trump. We saw that this week as Kamala Harris delivered a comprehensive economic plan and Trump railed on about how awful the economy is (it’s not) and kept up his voodoo economic tariff nonsense.
One side is repeatedly and openly lying to all of us and you need to do your homework. Otherwise that is going to be the acceptable norm in our government for the foreseeable future. Lies, corruption, and hypocrisy. Same old, same old.
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Hey Martin. I think we desperately need more written about the tariff lie because it is being sold extensively and you are right, so many don’t understand. The reaction is “Yeah…make China pay” which as you point out is not how it works..
Also, I agree with you: With electric cars the high tariffs made sense, American consumers had no interest paying the marked up price, so China lost because DEMAND was hurt, not because China didn’t want to pay the tariff. And it should be noted again and again that it was higher income earners, not low income earners making the decision to buy American electric cars and not the Chinese ones.
Then again to your point, tariffs on low end/cheap goods from China hurt the low income earner because they need or chose to buy these inexpensive basic items in order to live their lives. If low end Chinese goods get the Trump-tariffs, the low earners in the country will have to do without essential items while the higher income earners simply buy a different car.
Example: Wave Bye-bye Dollar Tree and stores like that.
So the question is…how to get this basic information in the hands of those currently being duped? The same ones who believed him in 2016 when he said Mexico would pay for the wall.