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“… Here’s what Trump and his sycophants don’t understand about international trade: It’s not about what you can sell, it’s about what you can buy.
Think for a minute about the finances of individuals. Why do people work? Not to be able to boast that they ran trade surpluses with their employers — “Hey, they paid me a lot, and I hardly bought anything from them.” No, people sell their labor so that they can afford to buy stuff.
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But what matters in a trade war is the fact that China can fairly easily find other agricultural suppliers, buying soybeans from Brazil instead of Iowa.
By contrast, the United States will have a hard time replacing many of the goods it imports from China. Furthermore, many of the goods we buy from China are industrial inputs rather than consumer goods.
So Trump has started a trade war that will disrupt our own supply chains. Remember Covid and its immediate aftermath? Remember how shortages spread through the economy and fueled inflation? Those days are about to come back, inflicting especially large damage on the manufacturing sector Trump claims he will revive. …”

Why Trump Will Lose His Trade War
His people don’t know what they’re doing or what they want
