JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: NEW TARIFFS COMING FROM TRUMP AT A TIME OF GREAT ECONOMIC RISK – WHAT AMERICA’S “STABLE GENIUS” HAS GIVEN THE WORLD – LEADERSHIP IN NOTHING – NOT PANDEMIC, NOT ECONOMICS, NOT TRADE, NOT FOREIGN AFFAIRS – AND REMEMBER, IT WAS AMERICAN TARIFFS IN 1930 THAT HELPED SPEED ALONG THE GREAT DEPRESSION

John Chuckman


COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY DON PITTIS IN CBC NEWS


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New tariffs in a world on the edge of a depression?

What a stunning fellow Donald Trump is.

Of course, his incessant attacks on the world's other great economy, China, and his attacks on trade, as against the WTO, can only make the world's economic situation worse.

And he is suppressing a lot of economic activity in a number of countries with illegal sanctions, American laws imposed by force on people who are not Americans.

His leadership through the pandemic was phenomenal too. A Columbia University study concluded 58,000 additional Americans would die because Trump did not respond to the original information he was given early.

And there are all the poor nations under sanctions struggling with disease and not enough supplies and necessities.

His magnificent leadership skills were perhaps best displayed in cutting ties with the WHO during a pandemic and in numerous cases of taking other countries’ medical supplies while creating real misallocations in his own country.

And then he set the fine example of never wearing a mask, a serious study having proved that masks were the single most effective measure the public can take for prevention.

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Let's not forget the second wave of the coronavirus heading our way.

It has already appeared in some countries, and it may well be worse than the first wave according to some experts.

With, of course, still further massive economic implications.

But Trump is always ready for more tariffs and sanctions and unsafe political rallies, even if he is ready for nothing else.

“Stable genius,” indeed, that America has gifted the world.

And never forget, it was bone-headed American tariffs - the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. 1930 - that helped generate the Great Depression.