Australia’s chances of escaping America’s global steel and aluminium tariffs appear all but extinguished, with the US president reconfirming his commitment to a comprehensive tariff regime he argues will be “the greatest thing we’ve ever done as a country”.
“We’re going to take in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs, and we’re going to become so rich, you’re not going to know where to spend all that money,” Donald Trump told reporters on board Air Force One flying from Florida to Washington DC.
“We’re basically going to take back the money – a lot of the money that we’ve given away over many decades.”
I will never understand how Americans developed a taste for his constant hyperbolic bullshit.
Really? Tariffs? Rehashing pre-WW1 economics theories is the greatest thing America has ever done? Greater than abolishing slavery? Greater than the civil rights act? Greater than the moon landings? Greater than the invention of the transistor?
Trump is at a point where nobody bats an eye to this. Trying to hold him accountable for literally anything he says is futile, and half the country things that quality is a good thing and they enable it.
You have a section of America that wants more manufacturing to return to the US, and they see tarrifs as a way to make more production domestic. Those people haven’t thought through that that will cause a lot of inflation and will heavily impact a lot of the manufacturing industry that the US still has.
Even if this plan succeeds, it’s not like the countries you just tariffed are just going to allow American exports into their markets. It will shrink the whole economy AND cause inflation at the same time. Economics fear this state for a reason.