If there is anything in the voters’ minds that may prevent Donald Trump from becoming president (that is, other than his narcissism, abrasive personality, potty mouth, misogyny and nativism), it is voter perception that he has no concrete policies that would fix the problems he so often complains about. As a result, recently the Donald has dipped his toe into the policy waters, and the results have been fascinating.
On trade, for example, in response to a New York Times question about his proposed 45 percent tariff on Chinese imports (which would increase by 45 percent the cost of the tens of millions of Chinese products we import), he said, “I would do a tariff … a tax, and the tax should be 45 percent.”
A week later he denied ever saying that. “That’s wrong,” he said. “It’s the New York Times. They are always wrong.” (The paper then released the audio recording proving he said exactly that.)
He then explained, “What I said to the New York Times is that we have very unfair trade with China. We’re going to have a trade deficit of $505 billion this year with China. A lot of that is because they devalue their currency. What I said was that we have great economic power over China, and if we wanted to use that amount — where the 45 percent comes in, that would be the amount they saw their devaluations that we should get. What I’m saying is that we do it but if they don’t start treating us fairly and stop devaluing and let their currency rise so that our companies can compete and we don’t lose all of these millions of jobs, I would certainly start taxing goods that come from China … hey, their whole trade is tariffed.”
The interviewer confessed he had no idea what Trump was talking about.
In another interview, Trump was asked if he would use battlefield nuclear weapons to take out ISIS if it would reduce the risk of harm to U.S. ground troops.
Trump responded, “I don’t want to start the process of nuclear. Remember, I’m a counterpuncher. Rubio hit me, Bush hit me. When I said low energy, he’s a low-energy individual, he hit me first. I spent … by the way he spent $18 million worth of negative ads on me … ”
Interviewer (interrupting): “This is about ISIS. You would not use tactical nuclear weapons against ISIS?”
Trump: “I’ll tell you one thing, this is a very good-looking group of people here. Could I just go around so I know who the hell I am talking to?”
Trump would be better served knowing what the hell he is talking about.
