This Twitter thread about Traitor Tot's Trade War is a must-read. Tried Threadreader, wouldn't work

[catbyte]

For brevity, I copied & pasted the subsequent tweets in the thread. Here it is:

Link to tweet

First, he started a trade war.

He had no idea what he was doing, but he started a trade war anyway, all while declaring that it wasn't a trade war.

Guess what? It's a trade war.

1/
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Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump

China is targeting our farmers, who they know I love & respect, as a way of getting me to continue allowing them to take advantage of the U.S. They are being vicious in what will be their failed attempt. We were being nice - until now! China made $517 Billion on us last year.
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And given where things are made nowadays, the ONLY country that CAN'T win a trade war is the United States.

It's not the 1950s, folks. We don't make stuff, we buy stuff.

And American business has no one to blame but themselves. 2/

They didn't want to pay American workers a living wage. They didn't want to give benefits to American workers. They didn't want to pay American taxes. They didn't want to do their duty to the American Republic. 3/

They didn't want to make things in the United States, but they sure loved calling themselves Americans, benefiting from all the things America provides, and trading on America's name. 4/

This is result. Right here. When you don't make anything, you got nothing to win a trade war WITH. 5/

What's that? We make money? Yeah. About that. For a while our wealth could prop up this imbalance. But here's the problem, all that money, decades worth, OUR money, spun up the economies in the rest of the world. 6/

An so, manufacturing economies like China are NO LONGER dependent on our money -- and when we drive them away from the US, they easily shift elsewhere, and then THEIR brands become household names in those economies and not ours. 7/

Hell, we don't even make ideas anymore. We outsourced that too. We hired people overseas to come up with new ideas, to flesh out the concepts, to write the code, to do the tech support. It didn't happen all at once, but little by little, we empowered those nations. 8/

And within a few decades, we become a backwater, left behind. This has happened before, you know. There are plenty of historical examples. We now find ourselves at the mercy of the very Third World countries we hold in contempt. 9/

The really ironic part? Conservatives are terrified of "communism," where government controls the means of production, meanwhile, the result of 4 decades of offshoring in the pursuit of ever higher profits has effectively moved production completely outside of US control. 10/

It's a trade war. And we're losing. Because we've got nothing to trade that our adversaries can't get elsewhere for less or make for themselves. We did that. 11/

Trump is a product of the very modern business mindset that created this situation, that values profit above all and ONLY profit. So long as he gets rich, so long as the rich get richer, the rest of the country can burn. It's not like they've made a secret of this. 12/

Trump's bluster and clumsy ill-conceived trade war blew up in his face, so he then blamed Americans like Harley-Davidson for not toughing out HIS blunder. He literally expected that others would bear the cost, to the tune of billions, for his mistakes. Why wouldn't he? 13/

If you've been paying attention, this should be no surprise. This IS the mindset of American business. Pollute the rivers, somebody else will clean it up. Poison the population, somebody else will clean it up. 14/

Destroy the economy via bad investments, junk bonds, mortgage scams, Ponzi schemes? Somebody else will clean it up. And that somebody else is ALWAYS you and me. And that's EXACTLY what Trump expects here. 15/

You lose your job, your home, your retirement, your savings, your healthcare, that's the price you pay so Ivanka Trump can make her shitty handbags for cheap. You lost your life savings because you got scammed by Trump University? Caveat Emptor, sucker. 16/

Because that too is the modern American businessman, never, ever, ever, take responsibility for your own mistakes. Somebody else will clean it up. So, NOW, Trump's taking $12 BILLION of YOUR money to bribe his victims. 17/

He's going to pay off American farmers with YOUR money for his mistake just like he paid off those porn stars. Trump is running America EXACTLY as he said he would. Yes he is. That's the ONE thing he told the truth about. 18/

He's running America exactly as he runs his business. He never has to pay for his mistakes. HE profits. YOU get screwed. He makes the mess, you get to clean it up. 19/

And I don't know why this would be a surprise to anybody. I warned you son of bitches. I did. A lot of us warned you this would happen. If you elect a businessman, you are going to get the business. And you're gonna get it good and hard. Every. Single. Time.

20/20

[Stonepounder]

1. And don't forget

the concept of 'family farms' is pretty much a thing of the past. Modern agriculture is giant agribusiness corporations. They are the ones getting our $12bn. More reverse Robin Hood. If the electorate doesn't get it, if the Dems don't scream it from the rooftops, if we don't take back Congress, then we deserve exactly what we get. 3rd world status.

And what these idiots sitting in their gilded castles is that when there is no one left to buy stuff, when tax revenues drop precipitously because we no longer have decent incomes. where is the money going to come from for them to take from the poor and give to the rich?

[scarletlib]

2. BAM!

[riversedge]

3. and here is one of many good responses...

Link to tweet

[LiberalArkie]

7. But the information technology jobs went to India. The service jobs went to the Philippines and such

Thus leaving the MacDonalds and Wal Mart jobs here, but they don't pay much so even the fast food and Walmart have had to cut back on employees as no one has any more to splurge at Walmart except for the managers and suck people still left here.

[xeodtech]

12. Thanks

You made me touch my screen with your little bug.. and I work in IT.. Great Laugh... needed that in these times..

[LiberalArkie]

18. It is the little things now, isn't it?

[SergeStorms]

10. ...."a celebration of ignorance"....

And that, in a nutshell, is why Donald Trump is president, and not in a psychiatric hospital.

[FakeNoose]

14. Carl Sagan - startlingly prescient

Wow!

[kimbutgar]

4. The Twitler doctrine

Remember the Bush doctrine the right wing media put out, attack before you get attacked.

Now the Twitler doctrine is, what is good for the Twitler brand and himself is what he will do. Helping the American people is bs for the dumbass cult members. The rest of us knew he was a con man from many years ago. He is a Russian asset doing Putin’s bidding of destroying America. Heck, I bet Putin put that tariff idea in twitlers demented brain.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. He started a six-front trade war. He thought everyone would simply fold up. But they go around him.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

6. What happened last half hour trading today to goose stock market up so much?

[dixiegrrrrl]

15. Didn't he make some announcement in the Rose Garden to day?

Something to the effect of backing down on the trade war thingy...?

[Bernardo de La Paz]

16. Thanks. Could be that EU agreement to talk. . . . nt

[Delmette2.0]

8. There isn't much we can build in this country without imports.

From military hardware to home cooking utensils, all or critical parts are imported.

[dixiegrrrrl]

17. That also means we don't make much to support the massive debt we now have.

Our debt was sorta paid for by people and countries buying treasury bonds, and China was buying a LOT of them.

The real value of our money...of a dollar..has been declining for the last couple decades now, one of the reasons the 2008 recession was really a depression, something that seems to happen when the Republicans are in power.

And yet, the greed is so intense that the middle class golden goose is being killed. Housing is becoming quite unfordable
in much of the country, real jobs are scarce, more people are living on barely survivable wages.

So now the crooks have only governments to steal from, and that won't last long.

[rurallib]

9. An excellent summary of not only the trade wart all of Traitor Tot's policies

fuck it up, steal all that you can, leave it for someone else to clean up.

[pansypoo53219]

11. well, the GOP uses faith based ekonomikks. reality be damned.

[onlyadream]

13. Epic twitter rant.

And so true. The greed of business making factories in places that have terrible human rights and no environmental regulations will surely make a cheaper product. Not a level playing field, and our government should have put tariffs on every single country that fits this bill. That would have either made these countries better for the citizens and environment , or put our money hungry business people out of business.

[calimary]

19. No kidding.