"TRUMP'S SCAM IS FAILING HIM, & HE'S IN A PANIC OVER IT."(Comphrensive overview)

[Centerleftfl]

DUH!!! Sadly, what is 'galactically' worse, HE FAILED AMERICA!

This is a pretty broad overview of where we stand now. WAPO, aside, you can find these TAKES from the top down, economists, street view, COMMON SENSE.

I'm c&pg the whole article as MOST here likely don't have a subscription to WAPO. (Highlights are mine)

Trump’s scam is failing him, and he’s in a panic over it

President Trump urged supporters at a rally Aug. 15 to vote for him in the 2020 presidential election, or else "everything is going to be down the tubes." (Reuters)



By Greg Sargent

Opinion writer

August 19 at 9:26 AM

As President Trump prepares to run for reelection on the claim that his populist nationalist agenda has been a smashing success, it’s awfully telling that Trump and his advisers have now launched a frantic, multi-front effort to deny glaring truths about that agenda that are all right there in plain sight, for all of us to see.

A new report in the New York Times documents an emerging pattern: Trump is increasingly explaining away warning signs of a potential recession by resorting to lurid conspiracy theories. Trump claims the Federal Reserve is working against him. He also stated

the “Fake News Media” is fabricating recession fears — and exaggerating the damage of Trump’s trade war with China, a key driver of those fears — to cloud his reelection chances.

What we’re seeing here should be understood as panic. The Times reports this on Trump’s private ventings to advisers:

Mr. Trump has been agitated in discussions of the economy, and by the news media’s reporting of warnings of a possible recession. He has said forces that do not want him to win have been overstating the damage his trade war has caused, according to people who have spoken with him.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports that Trump privately worries the economy might hurt him next year, and that Trump’s advisers are urging him to dial down the trade war with China, fearing that it’s damaging the economic outlook.

This isn’t Trump’s public posture at all. To explain away the harm from the trade war with China, Trump’s basic claim has been that China is bearing the full brunt of the damage.

For instance, Trump falsely says China pays his tariffs — supporting his narrative that he’s shaking down China for money it stole from us. His top trade adviser says the tariffs’ costs aren’t falling on Americans.


(Patrick Semansky/AP)

But studies show otherwise. And Trump himself implicitly conceded as much by delaying his latest tariffs out of fears of higher prices for U.S. consumers during Christmas season.

[James Downie: The Trump economic team: Men without a plan]

Meanwhile, Trump’s efforts to downplay the trade war’s carnage at home — which his advisersare also gamely echoing — are also undermined by the niggling fact that his own administration has secured billions and billions of dollars in aid to farmers harmed by China’s retaliations.

More broadly, Trump has hand-waved away recession worries in a manner that’s unintentionally revealing. Asked Sunday about those fears, Trump said: “Our consumers are rich. I gave a tremendous tax cut, and they’re loaded up with money.”

This is remarkable. Trump’s economic agenda represents a fusion of populist and nationalist trade hostilities with a full-on embrace of conventional GOP plutocracy — huge attempted cuts to the safety net and a massive corporate tax cut that showered most of its benefits on the very top earners, completely betraying his campaign posture.

On both these fronts, Trump’s economic agenda has failed to deliver for workers. The tax cut didn’t produce its promised explosion of job-creating investments. As Paul Krugman notes, it produced a “sugar high” of stimulus, but growth has reverted to pre-stimulus rates.

And while it’s true that consumers are spending, the idea that Trump’s tax plan was primarily a “tremendous” tax cut for ordinary American consumers that left them “rich,” as Trump now claims, is laughable.

Meanwhile, the trade war wreckage continues to mount, damaging Trump’s own constituencies and, now, helping to threaten a possible recession.

Yet Trump is trying to minimize the mounting signs of failure in the one area where he actually attempted some form of economic populist nationalist agenda — albeit wrongheadedly — by pointing, in hilariously misleading fashion, to the area where he actually embraced plutocracy.

The failures of Trumponomics

In a good piece, economics writer Neil Irwin points out that the gathering threat of a recession is being driven in part by the fact that corporate investment is “softening” because Trump’s trade wars are feeding uncertainty about business decision making. Yet Trump’s tax cut was supposed to fuel that investment.

As Irwin points out, recessions can happen when a core assumption about our future is undermined. In this case, it’s the idea that the world will “become more stable and interconnected over time,” and that trade and diplomatic relationships “can be counted upon.” Trump is helping undermine that assumption, and a freezing up of business investment could be the emerging result.

Trump isn’t the only factor undermining that assumption. Others include the weakening of the Chinese and European economies (which also has something to do with Trump’s trade wars). And it’s certainly possible that our economy can contain this damage.

But the bottom line is that Trump’s “America First” nationalism is looming as an economically destructive factor to a far greater extent than Trump’s plutocratic tax cut is acting as an economic positive (though it did produce lots of stock buybacks).

The story Trump told was that he would end the selling out of workers by “elites,” by shaking down China and other countries, forcing them to revamp trade deals that were robbing workers blind. Meanwhile, his tax cut would put tons of cash in workers’ pockets and fuel an explosion of trickle-down investment.

But the former is threatening disaster. And the latter did a lot more for those hated elites than it has done for working people.

Trump is still telling that same story. It’s certainly possible that this story might work among just enough Rust Belt voters to drive an electoral college win amid an even bigger popular-vote loss this time. But it’s clear that Trump himself fears his story is at serious risk of failing him.

Read more:

Jennifer Rubin: Trump’s economic record is one big con

Catherine Rampell: Trump has a dream team for mismanaging a recession

Robert J. Samuelson: Trump is not a ‘great deal-maker.’ His trade issues with China make that obvious.

Fareed Zakaria: Trump’s trade war clearly isn’t working

Jennifer Rubin: Trump sinks the markets — and maybe his reelection chances

Marc A. Thiessen: Trump didn’t start this trade war. China did.

[PoliTalker]

"The Trump economic team: Men without a plan"

Too funny!

And very sad.

[Heff]

Greg Sargent, another hack in the pockets of the DNC.

[PostmodernProphet]

I'm curious what demmycunts are referring to when they say Trump is "in a panic"........they say it a lot but don't seem to have anything to show for it.........is it when he criticizes them?........if so, demmycunts have been "in a panic" every day since the election.......

[evince]

why do you keep defending his every failure?

[ThatOwlWoman]

"The Trump economic team: Men without a plan"
Too funny!
And very sad.

So much winning.

I wonder just how the "fake media" is going to "crash the economy"? Of course most of his supporters are too damn stupid to disbelieve yet another whopper from the Whopper-teller-in-Chief.

[CharacterAssassin]

Greg Sargent, another hack in the pockets of the DNC.

Which is utterly irrelevant to the veracity of what he wrote.

Fun to watch you unable to address that.

Funboring.

[Trumpet]

Plutocracy is enslavement of the working class.

[Trumpet]

Greg Sargent, another hack in the pockets of the DNC.

What about the plutocrat hacks???? How are they benefiting you????

[Trumpet]

I'm curious what demmycunts are referring to when they say Trump is "in a panic"........they say it a lot but don't seem to have anything to show for it.........is it when he criticizes them?........if so, demmycunts have been "in a panic" every day since the election.......

Your usual retarded nonsense.

[Truth Detector]

"TRUMP'S SCAM IS FAILING HIM, & HE'S IN A PANIC OVER IT."

What is the scam? Lowest unemployment in 50 years? 3% GDP growth. A booming stock market? Manufacturing jobs on the increase?

I will tell you the REAL scam; the media pretending they tell the truth and report the news. Another one; the Democratic Party of the Jackass agenda.

[Truth Detector]

"The Trump economic team: Men without a plan"

That was Obama's you sad, pathetic dumb leftist fuck.

[Truth Detector]

why do you keep defending his every failure?

What failures? Lowest unemployment in 50 years? 3% GDP growth. A booming stock market? Manufacturing jobs on the increase?

[Truth Detector]

So much winning.

Yep; lying leftist hacks like you wouldn't know what that feels like.

[LV426]

I'm curious what demmycunts are referring to when they say Trump is "in a panic"........they say it a lot but don't seem to have anything to show for it.........is it when he criticizes them?........if so, demmycunts have been "in a panic" every day since the election.......

Trump is panicking because the one thing left he could run on (the economy) is not looking good.

So if he can't run on the economy because the tax cut killed it, and he can't run on the Trade War because he lost it, all he has to run on is the racism that attracted you to him in the first place.

But that racism isn't appealing to enough people to help him, even in the states he "won" in 2016.