Sen. Rand Paul explained to CNBC viewers how backward and ridiculous Trump is by claiming trade deficits are terrible and then levying economic destroying tariffs on our trade partners to appease his obsession.
PAUL: I mean, the whole debate is so fundamentally backwards and upsides down.
It's based on a fallacy. And the fallacy is this, that somehow in a trade, someone must lose.
That somehow when you trade with someone, there's a loser and someone's taking advantage of you and China's ripping you off or Japan's ripping you off.
It's absolutely a fallacy.
Trump admitted his economic philosophy, if we can call it that, is from the 1890s which should signal to an actual Congress that this man is incapable and incompetent mentally to serve in the Oval Office.
Sen. Paul, who I normally can't stand, explained Trump's fallacy in terms even pig Trump can understand.
PAUL: Every trade that occurs in the marketplace is mutually beneficial.
If you have a free society and I trade with you, if you want to sell me your coat and I give you $200 for it, we both agree to it and we're both happy with the trade. No American consumer trades with China. They trade with Walmart or they may buy something from China, but they individually buy something they want and they make a decision.
The trade is always a win-win.
You could artificially do this accounting between countries and say, oh, trade deficit, look at this trade deficit, but I have a trade deficit with my grocery store.
The people who employ me, if I work for a Corvette and they employ me, they have a trade deficit with my labor. They buy my labor and I never buy their cars. You can have this artificial accounting and it makes it look like a bad thing, but you have to ask yourself, is trade good or bad?
And if you look at the trade deficit in times of a recession, the trade deficit goes down. So if the tariffs pushes into recession, we could reduce the trade deficit because we're all buying less stuff.
We have to get back to the fundamentals of is trade good or is trade bad.
"And there's one graph if you look at it and it has trade trade for the last 70 years went up exponentially, international trade, but so did GDP per capita," he said. "We get wealthy with trade, not without trade."
Congress must step in and stop these insane tariffs that are destroying America and everyone living here.
