Thread by @AGHamilton29

Let me explain why this is a bad defense of Trump's trade policy:

1) Evidence that is trump's goal is scarce. Thus far we have only seen increasing tariffs and Trump has repeatedly said he is fine with that, which is consistent with his lifelong support for protectionism.

https://twitter.com/AMREV17JUN1775/status/1021879026825211904

2) Many of Trump's tariffs have actually been targeted at countries who already have lower average tariff rates than us. (Ex: Canada overall rate on all products = 1.56% vs. U.S. was 1.67% in 2016 via the World Bank).

When confronted with this fact, Trump has babbled about trade deficits (which are not bad) & repeatedly deflected by pointing out tariffs on specific products being high which makes no sense as an excuse for him raising tariffs on completely different products/raw materials.

3) The harms from a trade war: increased prices for most Americans, job losses, bailouts etc. far outweigh any potential gain of slightly lowering already historically low barriers among our trade partners. How is crashing our economy to get Canada from 1.6% to .8% worth it?

Also, countries like China will always win a trade war because they don't care about harms to their own consumers compared to producers. As the richest country in the world, we lose with our own tariffs AND retaliatory tariffs applies by other countries.

4) The whole premise of these actions is that we are somehow suffering due to our trade deals. In fact, we have low unemployment and actually benefit immensely from every one of our trade deals. They are the reason we are so wealthy.

5) The obsession with "fairness" is the real problem here and people on the right should recognize and condemn it because it's the same argument used with income inequality. Is it more important that we have equal tariff rates or that Americans are better off?

No different than Margaret Thatcher's famous "you'd rather the poor were poorer line":

Do you care more about Americans being better off or saying that we have equal rates just for things to be fair? Fairness is only good if it benefits us.

Trumps' trade policies are just as bad and harmful as any of Bernie Sanders' big government proposals, with a track record for failure which is just as clear. No one who attacks Sanders' socialism should be defending Trump on this.

6) Lastly, every country has been steadily reducing their tariff rates long before Trump started with his trade war. We could easily end up with "better deals" without putting Americans through unjustifiable economic pain.

H/t @scottlincicome for that last chart. There is no better follow for this topic (you can mute the rest of his tweets). #FF