Donald Trump is illiterate in nearly every conceivable way, and economics is no exception.
If you wanted to enact a policy that nearly every credible economist in the world thinks is a bad idea, your choices basically boil down to starting a trade war with the whole world and defaulting on our debt payments.
Donald Trump has proposed both of these policies and, surprisingly enough, actually enacted the slightly less stupid of the two.
Now, the effects of Trump’s policies are starting to come into focus, and the picture is a grim one.
As part of a reorganization, Ford is planning to cut its workforce by what Goldman Sachs estimates is 12 percent, or 24,000 workers.
And according to the company, some of the carnage is a direct result of Trump’s quixotic trade war:
Ford has already warned that President Donald Trump's auto tariffs have impacted the company to the tune of $1 billion, and the president’s trade policies threaten to play havoc with Ford’s ongoing reorganization, [Ford CFO Bob] Shanks told NBC News.
Trump and Ford have been squaring off since well before the 2016 election, when then-presidential candidate originally threatened to impose hefty tariffs on vehicles Ford intended to start importing from a factory in Mexico. The carmaker eventually scrubbed that plan, but rather than return production to the U.S. it decided to move it to China.
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Ironically, Ford actually may have to cut production of the Mustang and some other models — in the process, potentially reducing U.S. jobs — as a result of the tariffs China has enacted on American-made vehicles in a tit-for-tat trade war. The Mustang had been one of the most popular U.S. vehicles sold in that country.
Unfortunately, the trade war is likely to get even more destructive, because our alarmingly cocksure president knows nothin’ about nothin’.
The only question is, will voters realize he’s doing nothing to help them while at the same time planting dozens of landmines along the way that will inevitably explode under their feet?
Some will, but by then it might be too late.
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