Trump’s Failed Trade War
In 2018, Donald Trump told us that trade wars are “good and easy to win.” How did that turn out? The final numbers are in for Trump’s failed trade war and it’s not pretty. Trump’s remarks haven’t aged well.
From Politico: “The U.S. trade deficit over the four years of President Donald Trump’s presidency soared to its highest level since 2008, a new Commerce Department Report showed on Friday,” Politico reports.
“The combined U.S. goods and services trade deficit increased to $679 billion in 2020, compared to $481 billion in 2016, the year before Trump took office. The trade deficit in goods alone hit $916 billion, a record high and an increase of about 21 percent from 2016.”
Trump had the three largest annual trade deficits in history during his four years as POTUS.
And just what — if anything — did we get for this failed trade war?
More than 40 percent of net farm income came from federal government payments in 2020. Per the NY Times: “The breadth of the payments means that government support will account for about 40 percent of total farm income this year. If not for those subsidies, U.S. farm income would be poised to decline in 2020.”
Is that socialism?
According to the Nebraska Farm Bureau, Nebraska farmers lost $943 million due to the trade war in 2019. That amount was in addition to the staggering loss of $1 billion in 2018.
Trump’s tariffs largely wiped out the temporary and tiny tax cuts the middle class received from his failed 2017 tax cut for the rich. A CNBC analysis of data from the Treasury Department ranks the combined $72 billion in revenue from all the president’s tariffs as one of the biggest tax increases since 1993. In fact, the tariff revenue ranks as the largest increase as a percent of GDP since 1993 when compared with the first year of all the revenue measures enacted since then, according to the data.
Can anybody here who supports Trump present any actual evidence or data from a reputable source that would tell us the trade war was a success? Let’s hear from you!