What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[Valmy]

So Trump is apparently serious about the 35% tariff?   

Is that a presidential prerogative? I can't see Congress passing that. It's so boneheaded.

No. Anything related to money needs Congressional approval.

[Zanza]

China will dump all the stuff they cannot sell in America on the European market. That is probably not good for our own industries.

[celedhring]

It would make the US industry extremely noncompetitive. Besides, it ignores the reality of manufacturing in the current world, with parts and components travelling all over borders, even if the final assembly is either in Detroit or Monterrey. It would wreak havoc in many US companies.

[Tamas]

Anyone who falls for the "no, it's not a painfully stupid spur of the moment idiocy, it is one piece of the puzzle of a magnificent secret master plan!" narrative will be officially disapproved as an intelligent person, by me.

[Syt]

Seeing a devious master plan in Trumps tweets/diplomatic overtures is like seeing Jesus's face on a slice of cheese toast.

If you squint and look from the right angle it may appear that it's there, but mostly it's just your brain trying to see a pattern where there's none.

[grumbler]

Seeing a devious master plan in Trumps tweets/diplomatic overtures is like seeing Jesus's face on a slice of cheese toast.

If you squint and look from the right angle it may appear that it's there, but mostly it's just your brain trying to see a pattern where there's none.

I like this analogy, and am stealing it.

[Razgovory]

Fair.  When I coined the phrase "political pareidolia" Malthus stole it from me.  Though I should remind you that the last time you stole something they chained you to that rock and had that eagle go to town on your liver.

[DGuller]

The one genuinely good thing about Trump in foreign policy is that he is credibly irrational.  That actually confers some negotiating advantages over adversaries.  That has disadvantages too, of course, but what is the point of fixating on that which is obvious and depressing?

[mongers]

The one genuinely good thing about Trump in foreign policy is that he is credibly irrational.  That actually confers some negotiating advantages over adversaries.  That has disadvantages too, of course, but what is the point of fixating on that which is obvious and depressing?

Doubly ironic that at the time of his Taiwan tweets, Kissinger was in China meeting the leadership there.

[Syt]

Only Trump could phone Taiwan.

[derspiess]

Bullshit.  I don't think you have changed a bit since the start of November.

I've always been willing to give Obama credit where it's due.

[garbon]

Bullshit.  I don't think you have changed a bit since the start of November.

I've always been willing to give Obama credit where it's due.

You just think he's never due it.

[CountDeMoney]

I've always been willing to give Obama credit where it's due.

That boy shines dem shoes real nice.

[OttoVonBismarck]

That's the genius of Trump's approach.  His style means that everyone can see in him what they want to see.  "He lies about most things, but he really means it when he talks about the issues I care about!"  "He's not crazy, he's crazy like a fox!"  "He may sound crazy, but he's a successful businessman, he'll hire smart people!"

To be fair, I had a spell of "he's crazy like a fox" thinking myself for some time during the GOP primaries.  But eventually I realized that no, he's just fucking crazy, but he happened to be just the right fucking crazy man at just the right time.  Problem is that there is no guarantee that the right time for his style will continue, but there is a pretty solid guarantee that he'll continue being the fucking crazy man.

Trumps reall skillset, that both made him a billionaire, won him the primaries, and won him the general are a PT Barnum style carnival barker's salesmanship ability. If you read about a lot of his business career, there's a ton of instances where he inexplicably convinces people who should've known better (big money investors and banks) to believe whatever he's pitching, sometimes his projects worked out and everyone made money, but sometimes they didn't. He's also savvy at legalized graft, but that's more of a learned behavior from his dad (the Trump family had long relied on close work with local government and government special treatment to get profits on its real estate projects.)

The bad thing about Trump is once you get past that, he's basically a guy of middling intelligence who doesn't know much about foreign or domestic policy, and some of his opinions are unchanged from the 1980s, and based on things which haven't factually been true since then.

[OttoVonBismarck]

So Trump is apparently serious about the 35% tariff?   

Is that a presidential prerogative? I can't see Congress passing that. It's so boneheaded.

No. Anything related to money needs Congressional approval.

Incorrect--don't spout off like this in the future lest you look the fool.

The President has broad powers, granted by statute, to levy tariffs. Bush used it to levy tariffs on steel, he argued American steelmakers were being victimized by dumping. He lost his case at the WTO and thus we were hit with retaliatory tariffs that cost us billions, but many think the steel tariffs he enacted for one year were at least part of what pushed Bush over the top in Ohio '04.