Donald Trump finds a whole new way to lose

| 4:35 pm EST November 30, 2018
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If Donald Trump is intentionally trying to end his (illegitimate) presidency and destroy America, he could not be doing a much better job of it. For whatever reason, there are still some Trump cultists who insist on firing tear gas on women and children seeking asylum, and destroying the environment, are a good thing. But one policy that all sane people can agree on is that Trump’s idiotic trade wars are hurting America.

Back in March, Trump tweeted his ridiculous belief that “trade wars are good, and easy to win.” Then in June, sounding like a degenerate gambler, Trump tweeted “When you’re almost 800 Billion Dollars a year down on Trade, you can’t lose a Trade War!” Trump imposed his largest round of tariffs in September on $200 billion of Chinese goods. With the Dow Jones now down over 1600 points since its high in September, it is demonstrably evident that trade wars are indeed not good and not easy to win.

Now it turns out the Trump administration has absolutely no idea how international trade works, or even how to properly enforce its tariffs on China. The administration is so incompetent, nearly every request by American companies to import Chinese steel and aluminum tariff-free has been granted. Mandel Metals, an aluminum distributor near Chicago, was awarded up to 600 million pounds of tariff-free aluminum, which is six times the amount the company sells each year. “Our intent was not to shoot the moon here and gobble up exclusions,” said Mike Ward, the company’s president. “We didn’t know any better. They seemingly greenlighted everything we sent them.”

China is competent enough to actually enforce its tariffs on American goods, so not only are the tariffs against China ineffective, Americans are paying higher costs for many products they buy every day. According to the US Census report released Wednesday, the monthly goods deficit grew by $1 billion in October due to Trump’s trade war. At this point, if someone told me Russian President Vladamir Putin had secretly ordered Trump to crash our economy, I would believe it.