When former President Donald Trump was asked about his plan to lower the cost of groceries, he said that he would slap tariffs on foreign food imports.Scott Lincicome and Sophia Bagley of the libertarian Cato Institute, however, believe Trump's plan is "deranged" and they write in The Atlantic that ...
He doesn’t understand the nuances of making policy decisions, so his default answer to stuff like this is to just impose tariffs because that’s all he knows. He doesn’t care to understand and would likely eat the crayons you use if you were to try to explain it to him. He’s just incapable of that sort of mental growth.
I don’t know how you can miss that, though.
Tariffs on imported goods means the price raises to cover the increased cost to import it.
Tariffs are a mechanism to encourage domestic production by making foreign competition more expensive.
It’s literally the opposite of reducing the cost to consumers.
Trump has to understand this. But he knows his rabid base do not. So he says it like it’s going to help consumers, rather than exclusively the domestic producers that are already overcharging.
He doesn’t understand anything. He’s lived in a completely separate reality his entire life.