You give Trump way too much benefit of the doubt when you treat this as a trade war rather than a massive socialized tax. His explanations are stupid because they're some bullshit he makes up to pretend this isn't just a tax hike on all of us.
Well, it's both, surely? It's a tax on Americans, but Trump is also extremely stupid, so in his head it's about giving 'payback' to nefarious foreigners. Hence the way it's particularly vicious towards the world's poorest countries - that end up with highest tariff rates because of the insane formula they've used combined with the fact that countries like Cambodia or Sri Lanka are too poor to buy anything much that the US produces (but maybe export a few specific minerals or crops that the US can't produce domestically).
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