Trade Deficits? HAH!

It is all a charade to cover for radical restructuring of USA taxation

Donald Trump doesn’t care about trade deficits.

Since the implementation of progressive income taxes in the early 20th Century the wealthy and people persuaded by them have agitated, resisted and complained about “excessive taxation.” They have also lobbied the Congress, successfully, for limits, exclusions, credits, and numerous loopholes through which wealthy people of means can reduce their total contribution to the Nation’s expenses.

Prior to the income tax the nation’s taxes were much more regressive, hitting the poorest people the hardest while allowing the very wealthy to avoid paying anything like a fair share. What has become clear in Trump’s current tariff initiative is that he is smarter than people think. While everyone in academia, investments and on-air pundits are all up in arms about the inherent nonsense about trade deficits that is spewing out of Trump’s burger-hole they overlook, or mostly overlook, his real mission.

Trump’s real mission is to transfer the burden of national taxes off of the income tax and onto (essentially) a national sales tax. This would once again, as with Smoot-Hawley tariffs, throw the burden of the nation’s expenses disproportionately onto the poorest people while greatly reducing what the very wealthy, and corporations, would pay, as a percentage of their income.

What’s more, Trump being an extremely devious charlatan, he will get everyone in such a tizzy fit over the irrational and extreme tariffs that when he is seen to “back down” on his current extreme tariffs in favor of what many people, especially Congressional Republicans, will declare “a much more reasonable approach”, his backing down will hand an ostensible “victory” to Congressional Republicans making them look good in the run-up to the 2026 midterms, while also achieving his goal of greatly increasing tariff contribution to the national income. His victory will come at the cost, of course, of impoverishing most Americans and possibly causing a worldwide recession.

But the gigantic tax break for the upper echelons of income will of course be passed.