Hot take.
Trumps MSG rally was a strategic masterstroke. The play was to make it as outrageous as possible. It doesn't matter one whit. This stuff is so well known it is not changing anything. Access Hollywood didn't change anything.
All this did was harden the message "Trump has no character, but his strong point is the economy"
His WEAK point is the economy. They just have bamboozled people to thinking it's the strong point. Sure, prices are up compared to four years ago. They say "look at the price of eggs!" But *inflation* is down. People see eggs that are more expensive than 4 years ago and so surely inflation is high. Inflation *was* high. Now, it's not. And inflation is a trailing indicator of policy. Trump created the inflation with his tardy ineffective response to COVID supply chain disruption. It took 3 years but it's been beat back
But oh, eggs are still expensive! Yes, it's true. And some things might actually deflate as competition brings prices down a bit, but not really - even more egg producers will have to pay the baked in costs in the chain to pay everyone else who's been buying expensive eggs.
Deflation - a real decrease in prices - is *BAD*. It creates massive recessions because people stop buying stuff while awaiting lower prices, freezing the economy. If we got to deflation Jerome Powell would set rates to zero or even negative.
With that settled - the real issue is Trump's tariff plans. Harris has done an "OK" job of underscoring how it's effectively a sales tax on consumers. What they've missed is that tariffs do one thing very well - completely screw up supply chains. Which - is exactly what created a mess 4 years ago. This would have huge negative impact on US companies.
The one operating theory is "Bring manufacturing back to the US!"
We currently have 3% unemployment. There aren't enough unemployed people in the US to make one tenth of even just annual iphone production. And those people don't live in the same town where you can just drop a factory. The US buys cheap stuff from overseas at low margin and adds massive value in the top end manufactured goods (or adds the value via design). That is the strategy to be the economic powerhouse we are. Tariffs will destroy that.
Recent
WTF happened to the WTF h...
by murphstahoe No New Wars! Well, maybe ... by Reacher
Total Members: 142