Trump once again spouting easily disprovable lies during another one of his cult rallies in Philly.
I guess he's pushing back against recent reporting that he's proposing a 10 percent across the board tariff on all imported goods to the United States, which would do great harm to average working people:
The idea, he has said, is to protect American jobs as well as raise more revenue to offset an extension of his 2017 tax cuts.
But that proposal would likely backfire, effectively acting as a tax on U.S. consumers, economists spanning the political spectrum say. If the tariffs are enacted — with Trump also proposing a levy of 60% or more on Chinese imports — a typical middle-class household in the U.S. would face an estimated $1,700 a year in additional costs, according to the non-partisan Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Meanwhile, the left-leaning Center on American Progress has also crunched the numbers and projects roughly $1,500 per year in extra costs for the typical household. The reason, according to experts: Companies in the U.S. that import goods from abroad typically pass the cost of tariffs onto American consumers; relatedly, domestic manufacturers then often raise their own prices.
The biggest impact of higher import tariffs would likely fall on low- and middle-income consumers because they spend a larger share of their income on goods and services than wealthier Americans, according to Kimberly Clausing and Mary Lovely of the Peterson Institute.
"If you are an economist, you know right away that tariffs are taxes. If you put a tariff on imported goods, it means they become more expensive" and competitors can raise their prices, Clausing told CBS MoneyWatch.
Those pesky facts didn't stop him from spewing this incoherent nonsense to his MAGA lemmings:
TRUMP: They're looking for hope. They're tired of... they're tired of being called stupid people all over the world. Four years ago, we were so respected and now we're being laughed at.
I took hundreds of billions of dollars away from China. One of these fakers up there said “He didn't take any money from China.” Tariffs. I tariffed them for hundreds of billions of dollars.
He said the American people paid. No, no, no! China paid! And the American people didn't pay for it at all. They didn't pay for it.
You know, they always find the reason They're they're genius in a certain way, but they're evil genius very bad genius. I'm nice genius. You know, I'm a nice genius.
Here's some of the reaction to Trump's gaslighting on Xitter:
