'The most economically illiterate speech I have ever heard', analyst says • FRANCE 24 English

The dumbest and most economically illiterate speech you have ever heard so far.
- We're confident that "our president" can beat his own record of stupidity. We've got the Peyton fucking Manning of stupidity.
  
  and a sex assault burn as well. Noice.

The most economically illiterate speech she has ever hear so far.

The man thinks like a toddler. "If I put tariffs on goods from other countries, other countries will have to pay to do business here and America will become rich, we are the biggest market so they have to live with what we demand"
He doesn't think the rest of the world can stand without them or he doesn't think that reciprocal tariffs will hurt America as bad as they hurt us.
First every company has a cost to produce goods. Typically they cannot go below this. That means putting the tariffs on finished products means the only way non US companies can continue to sell in the USA AND pay the tariff, is to raise the price to the US buyer. If the buyer is the consumer then shit , things get more expensive. If the buyer is a manufacturer based in the USA buying components from abroad, then they have to spend more to built the product, I.e their cost goes up and, shit, things get more expensive. That means the consumer gets hurt or the USA business swallow some of the pain but ultimately both get hurt, because the cost of the goods may become prohibitively expensive reducing the demand. Manufacturing overhead increases as a result so either the company has to fire the newly idle staff or the price goes up. Price goes up and fewer sell again and it gets stuck in a death loop for the business unless it is an essential product that people have no choice but to pay for.
Now the other side of it is that he thinks that imposing the tariffs mean everyone in the USA will buy American and it will be good for American business. Except the USA doesn't make everything it needs nor can it, at least in the short term. It is not simply a matter of switching suppliers to USA suppliers on the 5th of April. It is a matter of there being no alternative. Any prospective USA based supplier would have to set up a factory, tool up and gain experience in the manufacture of every tyoe of product all of which takes months if not years. Or foreign companies have to establish manufacturer at the cost of millions in a highly volatile country where the rules change on a daily basis. Also any company from overseas is at risk of having any employees who are not white Americans being detained or deported by ICE. Not what could be called a safe bet, or good investment Either way, by the time US suppliers come online the businesses that rely on those parts will very likely have gone under through the increased costs levied on them.
In the mean time, the world outside America is bigger. It will hurt us too, but I expect trade barriers to come down in the rest of the world and non-US manufacturers will be able to find alternative suppliers to the US ones they may currently use.
I was thinking devices like iPhones may become too expensive for people outside the US until I remembered they aren't manufactured in America, but with all the boycotts which will be exacerbated by reciprocal tariffs, I expect business is going to become very hard for American companies outside the USA.
If I were an American company right now I would be seriously evaluating moving outside the USA. Losing the US market is less harmful than losing the ROTW markets.
At the end of the day, there is an arrogance in these tariffs that says the world needs American goods and services more than America needs the world's goods and that we will cave before America. We all crave our McDonald's and Coke and Netflix and Teslas so bad that we'll give in and play by trumps rules. He thinks that there will be short term pain for long term gain for the USA, but I think it will be like that for the rest of the world and America is in for long term pain.
Ultimately America won't be the biggest market very soon, because buying power is going to go off a cliff and I think for Americans, it's going so stay down there. There will probably come a course correction in a few months time when the pain has become so bad for Americans that they demand heads roll. When that happens I don't think the ROTW is going to just say all is forgiven and go back to how things were. More likely this will cause lasting damage to the US and it's businesses and the rest of the world will adapt to avoid working with an unstable partner.
- He doesn't think the rest of the world can stand without them or he doesn't think that reciprocal tariffs will hurt America as bad as they hurt us.
  That's what happens when you OD on America Exceptionalism.
- The man thinks like a toddler.
  I think it's really important to make the point that he thinks like he thought as a business man. With his thinking, he at least managed to stay rich. Which is a strong indication of how much bluster and how little intelligence it takes to make it when you're already rich.
- We need to stop belittling his actions here. He's acting like a toddler but he's doing it because he wants power.
  These are actions totalitarian dictators take to flex their power.
  Trump sees himself as king and will not stop unless he's forced to stop.
  Comparing him to a toddler, a crazy asshole, or anything other than a dictator excuses his actions.
  Trump is trying to show the world that he is a powerful dictator.
  He doesn't care who he hurts or how the world responds. He only cares to secure power.
  
  I did not mean the toddler thing as a insult, but as an analysis. I genuinely think he can only think in straight lines. Any complexity escapes him. While I agree on the dictator stuff, I do think when he implemented a tariff it's because he thinks that it will either result in businesses setting up in America, or foreign companies paying. I think he thinks it is a genius move and that he has not thought through all of the possibilities. So although saying he thinks like a toddler like an insult, I didn't mean it like that. And I will also point out there is a difference between saying he is acting like a toddler to saying he thinks like a toddler.
- At the end of the day, there is an arrogance in these tariffs that says the world needs American goods and services more than America needs the world’s goods and that we will cave before America.
  That's not even the case. USA is the biggest importer, helped along by having the world's reserve currency. Trump's idea is to force everybody to quickly build factories in America, and manufacturing was part of the golden age, so he brings wealth back to the States. That's why he keeps yammering on about the trade deficit.
  I takes a few years to build a factory, from idea to first product. Many will figure it's easier to wait for a new president instead of actually committing billions to build out production, find workers and set up a local supply chain.
- The man thinks like a toddler.
  He's literally demented. His neurons are peacing out.

There's a lot of stupidity to point out with Trump, but I found myself focused on the pens.
It was my understanding, and perhaps I've gotten it wrong, that the reason there are a pile of pens there is so that the president can use all of them, using one for each letter in the name, one to cross the T, etc. Then give them out to a bunch of supporters so that they can each have a pen that was used to sign the law, executive order, or whatever other bullshit this moron puts his name on.
While I can't imagine why anyone would want a pen this shithead put his tiny little hand on to sign something, I am really baffled as to why they would want a pen that happened to be in a box with a bunch of other pens, one of which was used to sign something.
Lazy fuck can't even put the most basic effort into doing something for his most brain-dead, sycophantic followers.
- Former presidents gave out the pens. This seat-filler will try and sell them.