On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” Washington Post Intelligence Lead Global Security Analyst Josh Rogin said that President Donald Trump is correct that global trade hasn’t been fair to the United States, but his solution is completely wrong.
Host Bill Maher said, “I think I’m generally with the consensus, which is that this is some quixotic attempt to bring back an era in this country that is just gone with the wind, the manufacturing. But, I don’t know, I was shocked to see The…New York Times, their headline a week ago was, global trade robs U.S., Trump says, does he have a point?'”
Rogin responded, “Yeah. I think Trump has this amazing ability to correctly diagnose a problem and then to bungle the solution with a policy that’s totally incoherent and incompetent, and I think that’s what we’re seeing here. If you think about it, it’s obvious that they don’t have a strategy, because the strategy changes every day and the people at the top of the administration have no idea what the strategy is, they can’t articulate it. And saying that you’re going to only have a trade war with China and not the rest of the world is kind of like saying, oh, don’t worry, we’re not going to burn down the house, we’re just going to set fire to the kitchen, and then everything’s going to be okay. And it’s reckless and people know that and real people suffer from the consequences of the collateral damage that comes from jerking back and forth into, oh, we’re going to have huge tariffs, then we’re not going to have huge tariffs.”
Later in the show, Rogin did say trade wars can turn into hot wars and that while there are issues with China, pushing back on China while antagonizing a bunch of other nations won’t work.
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