Correct me if I’m wrong, but I recall a lot of Trump’s campaign centered around immediately bringing down costs for Americans. Costs that he said were due to Biden’s “highest ever inflation” (it was, for the record, not the highest ever). In fact, Trump’s message of de-flation was so clear, most of the sarcasm from the left after he won was that they “couldn’t wait for the price of everything to come down.”
Now Trump says: “They all said inflation was the No. 1 issue. I said, ‘I disagree. I think people coming into our country from prisons and from mental institutions is a bigger issue for the people that I know.’ And I made it my No. 1. I talked about inflation, too, but you know how many times can you say that an apple has doubled in cost?”
Lying about priorities aside, you can fact-check Trump’s claims and you’ll find that migrants are not coming into the country from prisons and mental institutions. But, fact-check sources have been branded by Trump as biased and so the people who need to be corrected will not even accept those tools for correction.
Trump, instead, upon returning to office, has prioritized the immigration crisis by turning his propaganda machine toward forwarding that’s it’s an invasion. From Mexico and….Canada.
I don’t know how many times I’ve made the point (with sources) that fentanyl and other narcotics come into the US via legal means, and how illegal immigrants take jobs that American citizens wouldn’t take, and how undocumented immigrants want to stay under the radar and thereby have a much lower crime rate. And I don’t know how many times I’ve re-iterated that illegal immigration is a problem to be addressed it’s just not a 16-alarm INVASION crisis, but that reality doesn’t get through when Trump ideology considers facts, data, and logic as brainwashing mechanisms used by liberals.
The point is, Trump lied to the people who lifted the tide in his favor- the working class and others who felt that their personal budgets were being ignored. Yesterday Trump imposed 25% tariffs onto Mexico and Canada. Canada has already returned the volley with 25% tariffs onto the United States. Trump’s reasoning was not immediately economic but rather to threaten both countries to impose stricter controls on drug traffic and illegal immigration. You know…on the “ invasion/crisis” that is, in reality, NOT causing the problems Trump has sold to his people.
This is a diplomatic game of “Who Will Blink First?” The problem is that the winners will only be the ones who really don’t care when prices go up; the people, like Trump, who didn’t even know eggs were selling at $8 a dozen because their help buys the groceries.
The losers, the other 98%, will be budget challenged, on average, by $200 more per month*. What is equally sinister is that some companies unaffected by tariffs will gouge their prices higher and soon higher prices become the accepted bottom line. But more and more families can’t contribute to the economy with some discretionary spending and then…boom.
2007 anyone?
And maybe it won’t happen. Maybe…the European Union, China, Mexico and Canada will blink first. Prices still won’t come down and wages still won’t rise. And we will still continue the supply side trickery of trickle down economics that has obliterated the middle class and will continue to keep working Americans wondering why they aren’t part of America’s prosperity.
Sigh.
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