Contributors

Thursday, April 12, 2018

Trump Manages to Make Himself Look Even Dumber

After flailing into a trade war with China that could bankrupt American pork and soybean producers, Donald Trump suddenly wants back into the Trans-Pacific Partnership that Barack Obama negotiated but Trump pulled out of:
President Trump, in a surprising reversal, told a gathering of farm state lawmakers and governors on Thursday morning that he was directing his advisers to look into rejoining the multicountry trade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a deal he pulled out of within days of assuming the presidency.

Rejoining the 11-country pact could be a sharp reversal of fortune for many American industries that stood to benefit from the trade agreement’s favorable terms and Republican lawmakers who supported the pact. The deal, which was negotiated by the Obama administration, was largely viewed as a tool to prod China into making the type of economic reforms that the United States and others have long wanted.
The whole purpose of the TPP was to form an alliance with other Pac-Rim trading partners against Chinese hegemony. But Trump was uninterested in making deal with our allies; instead he just insulted and attacked Australia, South Korea, Mexico, Canada and other signatories.

Throughout the campaign Trump either didn't understand what the TPP was or lied about it, implying that the deal included China (it doesn't) or disadvantaged the United States to the benefit of China.


Now that Trump is about to start a trade war with China, he's suddenly desperate for allies.

What this episode shows is how utterly clueless Trump is. He trashes things he doesn't understand (TPP, NATO, the rule of law), and then expects everyone to give him a hundred mulligans for all the catastrophically stupid mistakes he's made.

At this point Republicans in Congress should impeach Trump for sheer incompetence alone.

No comments: