The strategy was on full display just this week.
Take China and trade. His up-and-down interpretation of who pays for tariffs is a falsehood he repeated on Monday at his coronavirus press conference.
“We have taken tens of billions of dollars out of China,” he said, referring to the Treasury Secretary. He claimed that the United States had only lost money to China before its trade war. “And we gave $ 28 billion to our farmers because they were targeted by China.” In his remarks, the United States slashed tariffs on Chinese goods, the Chinese government paid those tariffs and President Trump transferred the money to American farmers.
But here’s the truth: American companies are paying for Trump’s tariffs. And the money to secure the distressed farm sale came from taxpayers, not from a magical bank account of money sent from China.
Yet this demand gets heavy play in Trump’s biggest hits from economic failures.
“It’s not true and not only do we know it’s not true, we know he’s told it’s not true,” said Tony Fratto, a former Treasury Department official in George W. Bush’s White House. now a management partner at Hamilton Place Strategies.
“What we do not know is whether the president believes it (or) whether this is the kind of thing he knows his supporters want to hear.”
Fact-checkers close away, but the complexity of tariffs simply does not matter to Trump, Fratto says. Trump supporters just want to hear that he “takes it to China.”
The Trump strategy? Project power, accentuate the positive, and facts do not matter.
That’s why in Trump’s world, with 5 million coronavirus infections and millions accumulating unemployment benefits, the president is promoting the stock market’s gains as a real – time poll for how people feel about him.
“401 (k) s are doing fantastic,” Trump said at a news conference at his Bedminster golf club Saturday afternoon. “I hope you kept your shares. I hope you did not sell. I hope you had confidence in your president and confidence that the president was re-elected.”
All presidents are concentrating on the positive, especially to be re-elected. But traditional administrations have been reluctant to take credit for stock market gains out of fear of going downhill or seemingly out of touch with the 45% of Americans who do not own stocks.
Sure for a president whose biggest argument for re-election before the pandemic was the strong economy, the stock market is a respite from months of terrible economic news. The Nasdaq has hit record highs and the S&P 500 has recovered its coronavirus losses, allowing Trump to cheerlead. And to cherry pick.
At his coronavirus press conference on Monday, he wondered about the rebound “record” in May, June and July of 9.3 million jobs added back. It was a record bounce, but lost out of an even-record crash of nearly 22 million jobs in March and April. (That is still a shortage of pandemic jobs of nearly 13 million.)
And he is not afraid to say out loud why it matters.
“There’s no reason why the economy could not grow by 20% in the third quarter,” he said. “That would be a record. And interestingly, it will be a number that will be announced before November 3.”
That’s right. He said it out loud. This is about his reelection.
Nothing the details. Or the facts. To know: that executive action show-and-tell at his golf resort Saturday.
On the tax department’s proposal, he said everyone wants it. (They do not.) And declared that he would make the tax cut permanent. (He can not. Congress must do that.)
He promised to reduce the tax on capital gains and lower rates for middle class. (That’s Congress, too.)
He promised $ 400 a week in additional unemployment benefits to non-working Americans. But he made that promise with money that states say they don’t have. Three days later, that was downgraded to $ 300 a week.
“It’s in his nature – the nature of the seller – to pump up the thing that does good and ignore the things that go bad,” Fratto says.
And with only a few months left until election day, you can bet there’s not much chance this behavior will change.
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