Me thinks your idea of economics and Trump's (and mine) is different. Economics, you know, like the discipline in college?
I have a masters degree in political science and cover down on global economic changes professionally. Yeah, I know.
Not necessarily about who America's trade partners are in Asia, for example. That's more political than economic knowledge, BTW. Is Cruz an expert on trading relations with the TTP? What difference does it make, anyway? Is Trump going to be negotiating any trade agreements with China, for example? Is Cruz? Your love of Reagan even with his bare minimum of knowledge in federal government and your love for free traders with little to no economic knowledge yet high amounts of ideology shows how disingenuous you are.
Knowing the major trade deals that are occurring
yes, impacts one's understanding of economic changes for the United States and the reasons. Reagan had decades of experience in both conservatism and government, the man knew deeply what he was talking about. Trump doesn't have a clue, which he shows, every time he is asked to provide any specifics, whatsoever.
Free Trade has been the correct answer, and demonstrated to be the correct answer, since Ricardo. I know this, because I read in, think about, and try to study economics. You are going to go google who that is because you don't.
Your comment about Trump's confusion on who a tariff would be placed on is a strawman. First, can you read Trump's mind?
He was confused. He had no idea what he was talking about. Unless you want to seriously argue that it was all part of a plan designed to make him look like a moron.
Second, how many products made in the US will be charged this tariff?
LOTS. You don't get to slap one tariff on one good and walk away, Cab. They retaliate. And usually feel obliged to retaliate stronger than you hit them. This is how trade wars start.
When we slapped a tariff on Chinese tires, for example, our chicken industry suffered.
Luckily, we don’t have to guess how such a tariff would impact the economy, because the Obama administration attempted a version of Trump’s idea seven years ago.
“It’s basically a real-world case study on what would happen if we imposed 35 percent tariffs on Chinese imports,” says Scott Lincicome, an international trade attorney and adjunct fellow at the Cato Institute. “In this case, we saw huge costs for consumers, gains by other foreign competitors, and almost no gains for American workers, even under the most generous of assumptions.”..
Economists Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Sean Lowry note that the number of Americans employed in tire manufacturing increased from 50,800 in September 2009 to 52,000 in September 2011. If all 1,200 jobs were attributed to the tariff — an exceedingly generous assumption — they calculate that Obama’s move could be credited with saving or creating $48 million of additional worker income and purchasing power...
But the tariff also forced consumers to spend $1.1 billion more on tires than they otherwise would have — or roughly $900,000 per U.S. tire industry job created. And retaliatory tariffs imposed by the Chinese further hurt our economy. In early 2010, China’s Ministry of Commerce imposed tariffs ranging from 50.3 to 105.4 percent on American poultry imports, which “reduced exports by $1 billion as U.S. poultry firms experienced a 90 percent collapse in their exports of chicken parts to China,”...
We lost
$2.1 billion in order to save $
48 million. That's how tariffs "work".