Donald Trump broke his promise to reduce the deficit in favor of giving tax breaks mostly to the rich. Now he’s clawing back most of the tax breaks that regular Americans may be getting by making them pay tariffs for his reckless trade war:
President Donald Trump’s trade wars have already wiped out all but $100 of the average American household’s windfall from Trump’s 2017 tax law. And that’s just the beginning.
That last $100 in tax-cut gains also could soon disappear — and then some — because of additional tariffs Trump has announced or is considering. If the president makes good on his threats to impose levies on virtually all imports from China and Mexico, those middle-earning households could pay nearly $4,000 more as they shell out more for a vast range of goods — from avocados to iPhones.
Subtract the tax cut, and the average household will effectively be paying about $3,000 more a year in additional costs [Laura Davison, “Trump’s Tariffs Have Already Wiped Out Tax Bill Savings for Average Americans,” Bloomberg, 2019.06.07].
South Dakota’s lone Congressman, Dusty Johnson, confirms that Trump is really raising taxes on South Dakotans:
We shouldn’t operate under any false pretenses…. Tariffs do raise costs to Americans, and that is, for some American families, that may take a thousand, two thousand dollars out of their pocket, and so that could absolutely for some folks offset the benefits of the tax cuts [Rep. Dusty Johnson, transcribed from audio, Jerry Oster, “Tariffs Offset Tax Cuts,” WNAX, 2019.06.12].
Usually South Dakota Republicans would be crying to oust any elected official who was saddling South Dakotans with another four-figure tax bill. But when Donald Trump affirms their id, Rep. Johnson is willing to roll over and say warm fuzzy things about “understand[ing] the President’s desire to try to think long-term…” even though it is clear that Donald Trump doesn’t think past his next extemporaneous comment to Fox and Friends, let alone the next few years of economic growth and international trade relations.
Too late for SD elected officials to criticize Trump.
Trump strategy to stay out of prison, delay impeachment and keep his wife, kids, siblings and associates out of prison is to wag the dog. A shooting war with Iran has started. Several tankers are damaged, surface to air missles have been fired at US made drones, and certainly Special Forces are on the ground in their Cabellas camo boots and camo tactical caps. Trump has started an international war over oil, nuclear weapons and religion. None of us will get out alive or unaffected, climate change will go unabated, the billionaires will hunker down and get richer, and every right we hold dear will go up in smoke. And Kristi is still banned from Pine Ridge, where I am headed, freely, right now.
Congratulations John Thune. You and Mitch McConnell will wreck the world in your mad grab for GOP power. Congratulations Republican sheep of South Dakota and every voter who made this debacle happen in 2016.
Putin is laughing. Koch Brothers SD are laughing. Tax havens in SD are filling up with international money. Ruepert Murdoch is laughing.
OTT? I hope so. Impeach the MTHRFKRS.
Good post as usual, Leslie. DFP readers, did you know The Pentagon hides vital security info from President Trump because he can’t be trusted?
~ For years, U.S. security and intelligence agencies have said that Moscow has inserted malware that could sabotage American power plants, pipelines or water supplies.
Now, the U.S. is deploying computer code inside Russia’s electricity grid and other targets as a warning to President Vladimir Putin and a demonstration of expanded permissions to deploy cybertools.
How we know: In interviews over the past three months, current and former U.S. officials described the classified program. It’s unclear how deep into the Russian grid the efforts have bored.
Another angle: Pentagon and intelligence officials described hesitation to go into detail with President Trump about the operation because of concern over his reaction and the possibility that he might countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials. 6/17/2019 NYTimes
What would you have Trump do? Continue to let China eat our lunch decade after decade until the next genocidal Maoist revolution?
Personally, I don’t care about the tax cuts, and I’m in favor of deepening the trade war significantly for two reasons.
1 – we become more self sufficient in the face of paid off drugged-out globalist neocons/lib “leadership” trying to overthrow the country in return for more coke.
2 – we wall off and preserve nationalist, western values of Liberty and freedom, even if it is guided by more precise scientific inquiry these days.
When you are afraid to fight, the bullies win. F the bullies. Bloody their noses by standing up to them together.
‘merica
Try not to argue against the person .. this is the mistake being made by neolibs/cons IMHO. The argumentative outcomes keep differing from the real world, and the people have wised-up?
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2019/06/16/peter-navarro-trumps-tariffs-accomplished-more-in-two-days-than-congress-in-20-years/
Looks like another government shutdown coming. trump/ republicans tariffs, trump/republicans tax cuts and trump/republicans shut downs steal from American pocketbooks like pickpockets. Johnson has to agree to all of this as his hands are in our pockets as well.
Drumpf has absolutely no idea what tariffs do, how they affect American consumers and cause prices to rise for consumers. But , then, Drumpf knows nothing about running a business, following the rules, keeping his mouth shut and the extent of damage he has done to America domestically and worldwide.
Under your feckless leader our trade deficits with China have hit record highs and debt and deficits are exploding.
Drumpf said today he doesn’t believe NK is building nukes. How freaking idiotic can a supposed human be and still be considered human?
Ha Ha Ha!!! Brietbart as a source? Ha Ha Ha!!!
Navarro’s comments at dead Breitbart are just propaganda and have been repeatedly proven to be fake news. Drumpf’s threat of tariffs on Mexico if they did not curb immigration, was baloney. Mexico and the US had already agreed to the deal weeks before Drumpf’s latest barrage of lies about immigration.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/08/politics/nyt-trump-mexico-agreed-deal-months-ago/index.html
Drumpf is a narcissistic, pathological lying phony, despicably deplorable doosh.
If there was ever anyone who needed to have a personal financial receiver appointed for him, it’s Wilted Weenie. He should never be allowed to touch money. Give him a strictly limited weekly allowance while someone sane and competent handles all money matters.
A Toddler Budget.
Soft balls;
1. ‘paid off drugged-out globalist neocons/lib “leadership” trying to overthrow the country in return for more coke.’ You mean Russians, sniffling trump himself, his drug-thin daughter and paid-off sons/sils, bannon, rupert murdoch, jagger’s turn-coat ex jeri hall, or all of the indicted targets; which reality are you beckoning, dale, to “deepen the trade wars”.
2. Your white supremacist values including the wall are dead in the water. They are ineffective and dead-ender bully efforts at scaring good people of conscience who decades ago proundly won the civil rights fight, who proudly defeated the Nazi-led Axis in WWII, and generations ago proudly won the civil war. Lost cause ‘murica is just that and can’t even keep the 2nd amendment from sinking in NRA quick sand, or overturn ROE v. WADE, or stem immigration intelligently, with its high capacity raging assault rifle maniacs, smashing cars into pedestrian counter-protesters, jailing/separating/kidnapping children and the DACA population, or mass murdering the real America daily.
They do not need bloody noses to defeat you with brain power. One “wag the dog” war at a time. Your boy is merely trying to stay out of prison with his family and deplorable enablers.
Don’t attack the person? Coke addled liberals, you said. Earlier you brought up something similar to Benghazi. You must be a russian troll. Time waster.
Deplorables have one weapon, fear.
Trump’s “herculean” effort to stymie china may be discussed later.
I don’t mean to argue against the person, John, but when we’re talking Trump, we have to talk about the person, because his impulsive, reckless, and selfish personality has led us into contradictory and counterproductive policies that do not promote the common good or achieve the things he says they do.
The tax cuts went mostly to the rich. The tariffs fall more on consumers. Both measures have a regressive impact. You can see that from the fact that tariffs are mostly wiping out the average taxpayer’s gain from the tax cuts (a point acknowledged by Rep. Johnson, so keep in mind, we’re not arguing about the facts of the situation, just the broader question of how long hangers-on can keep making excuses for supporting Trump), but the tariffs as a whole are replacing only a fraction of the new deficit created by the Trump tax cuts for the wealthy (again, policy results not in dispute).
Now here’s the thing, John: if a President came out and said, “China is hurting us. The only way we can respond and get China to stop hurting us is for us all to stop buying things from China and make everything we need here in America. We need to retool our entire economy, we need to raise taxes to pay for retraining and getting new factories off the ground, and we need to except some economic turmoil that will cost us all in the short-term… meaning your iPhones are all going to double in price,” and if the majority of Americans looked at those real policy plans and impacts and said, “Thanks for being honest with us—we give our informed consent to your anti-China plan,” I’d be willing to roll with it.
But we don’t have an honest President seeking real economic overhaul and self-sufficiency. We have a wailing, lying child in charge, throwing tantrums and doing things for nothing more than the satisfaction of his own egomaniac impulses, with no heed for economic theory or evidence or long-term good for the country. He can’t even tell the truth about the obvious facts of his own polocies, let alone lay out any long-term vision for American prosperity and global economic trade fairness.
Heck, John, you’ve laid out a more cogent vision for the global economy than Trump has.