Can someone please explain the economic literacy of this statement?

MemphisAg1 said:

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Another area that showcases Trump's illiteracy on economics.

A trade deficit simply means one country buys more from another country than they buy from them.

The US is the richest and one of the more populous countries on the earth.

By that very fact, we are going to buy more from many other countries than they buy from us.

The simple fact that a trade deficit exists does not mean anything is wrong.

You must dig deeper to understand if there are unlevel playing fields where the other country is subsidizing their output to gain an advantage over you. In that case, tariffs and other measures might very well make sense.

But to categorically describe trade deficits as a rip-off is kindergarten-level thinking.

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How do you know the economic theory which is in the college of liberal arts is factual? Trump sees the country as a business. And my business buys more of its crap from you business and vice versa then I'm losing money


Who's to say that the same Marxist higher levels of learning that are indoctrinating your kids from top to bottom in school causing them to get dumber didn't start with us or or our parents? You know what satans real name is right? Father of all lies

He's actually right even though I know what you're talking about with economics

If you are buying more from someone and they are buying from you it means that you are as a country losing money. Now maybe that's preferred because you like their goods better than your own. Maybe the utils for Caribbean coffee or Central American coffee or whatever is better than the coffee beans that we can make.

That's why every country in the world is ripping us off. There's a reason we're over 70 trillion in debt State debt unfunded liabilities it's not all Medicare and welfare. We are borrowing money to buy from overseas many times with technology and goods that some other country re-engineered and infringed on patents from our own people.

Free trade is a lot like Marxist Utopia it's great in theory but it's never applicable.

Economic efficiencies with trade is theory
It really works great on paper

Keynesianism economics is a sham. It teaches you to spend yourself out of a recession. That's called debt. Eventually the debt has to be recalled. The debtor becomes enslaved.

This is like people saying that the Federal reserve system is good for America

No it's ripped us off. Private Bank controlled by private families. That's why they tried to kill Andrew Jackson or they did I guess.

We're going to find out we were lied to about a lot of things

agsalaska said:

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Republicans cant get away from Trump fast enough.


At least those that want to win elections can't

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Simply not true.

MemphisAg1 said:

---

Another area that showcases Trump's illiteracy on economics.

A trade deficit simply means one country buys more from another country than they buy from them.

The US is the richest and one of the more populous countries on the earth.

By that very fact, we are going to buy more from many other countries than they buy from us.

The simple fact that a trade deficit exists does not mean anything is wrong.

You must dig deeper to understand if there are unlevel playing fields where the other country is subsidizing their output to gain an advantage over you. In that case, tariffs and other measures might very well make sense.

But to categorically describe trade deficits as a rip-off is kindergarten-level thinking.

---

Half our nation are ******ed kindergartners. Have you seen for whom they're voting?

agsalaska said:

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Republicans cant get away from Trump fast enough.


At least those that want to win elections can't

---

The average American's understanding of economics is worse than even Trump's.

His crazy econ rants are only a problem for people that hate him anyways.

I don't really care how much he rants about the trade deficit as long as he keeps Bessent around to tone down the crazy and advise him on not pulling another "Independence Day" fiasco.

Furthermore, Trump is usually directionally right on econ stuff, he is just so polemic. There is a grain of truth to what he's saying, if we buy other countries' stuff and they don't buy our stuff, they are buying up our businesses, and that crowds out the ability of Americans to invest in our businesses. The only thing keeping us a float is that currency has become a huge export for us, which evens things out quite a bit.

For Trump and econ, it is clear that he just understands people way better than he understands numbers.

As far as understanding people and zeitgeist, he is pretty much a genius.

Yeah All of the liberals need to learn to raise chickens and eggs and get off the Gubmint programs.
Add a garden behind Moms house also please. Be productive like a fat, capitalist pig.

shiftyandquick said:

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BusterAg said:

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agsalaska said:

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Republicans cant get away from Trump fast enough.


At least those that want to win elections can't

---

The average American's understanding of economics is worse than even Trump's.

His crazy econ rants are only a problem for people that hate him anyways.

I don't really care how much he rants about the trade deficit as long as he keeps Bessent around to tone down the crazy.

Furthermore, Trump is usually directionally right on econ stuff, he is just so polemic. It's clear that he just understands people way better than he understands numbers.

As far as understanding people and zeitgeist, he is pretty much a genius.

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Massive tariffs and the war against Iran are going to lead to massive losses of GOP influence and power. I would not call that economic genius or "directionally right."

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No, they are not.

The tariffs are a crude cudgel to address a real world problem for the US economy: the hallowing out of our industrial base, which we do on purpose and we shouldn't. As long as small business owners continue to do well in the US, and many of them are doing just fine, MAGA is going to continue to be a force.

These big tariffs are the worst for large businesses, which are used to DC giving them a leg up on those pesky small business upstarts. DC isn't doing that for them right now, and AI is just going to help them even more.

The war on Iran is an unfortunate necessity. Without keeping them in check, it's just a matter of time before a suitcase nuke goes off in NYC. People railing against the idea of a war on Iran are just Trump haters spouting Trump hate, or they are antisemites clinging to their bigotry.

There are plenty of threads here that talk about why allowing Iran to stockpile conventional ballistic missiles is a bad idea, and no one has made a logical argument against preventing that (but, that's a topic for another thread).

Finally, Trump is not an economic genius and I never said he was. And he is almost always directionally correct on econ. The US economy is growing primarily due to small businesses kicking ass, which burns up DC and Wall Street. More of that, please.

The guy is no economist and what economics theory he does understand is Keynesian, so yes, that's bad, but also some of the people who have had and want to have great influence over our economic policy are so much worse and they supposedly have economics education. Think Robert Reich and AOC.

Phatbob said:

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The guy is no economist and what economics theory he does understand is Keynesian, so yes, that's bad, but also some of the people who have had and want to have great influence over our economic policy are so much worse and they supposedly have economics education. Think Robert Reich and AOC.

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His 1% rant, government handouts, and huge debt spending are MMT-leans. The same MMT that AOC loves. He's not all that different than AOC economically

Straits Taylor Rule:

i = r* + π* + 1.5(π−π*) + 0.5(y−y*) + α(SOH−SOH*) + β(BEM−BEM*), α,β > 0

Let’s see if a hike could open SOH or produce a single barrel :)

You can’t 25bp a chokepoint and r* isn’t neutral. It’s SOH risk premium, and We set it.

Stay unanchored !

— محمدباقر قالیباف | MB Ghalibaf (@mb_ghalibaf) September 16, 2026

And here we are getting trolled by the Iranians in economic theory.

Sid Farkas said:

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The markets have Trump fatigue. They're poised to punish him. This doesn't help.

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How does a trading market have fatigue? Or are you subscribing to a globalist cabal that controls are the strings and they are exhausted with Trump?

Comment makes no sense at all. Like saying the press corps is exhausted.

agsalaska said:

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Republicans cant get away from Trump fast enough.


At least those that want to win elections can't

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Yea republicans were great at winning elections before Trump came along

Dobro Turtlebane said:

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Phatbob said:

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The guy is no economist and what economics theory he does understand is Keynesian, so yes, that's bad, but also some of the people who have had and want to have great influence over our economic policy are so much worse and they supposedly have economics education. Think Robert Reich and AOC.

---

His 1% rant, government handouts, and huge debt spending are MMT-leans. The same MMT that AOC loves. He's not all that different than AOC economically

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In basic theory, yes, but in practice it's the difference between marxism and populism... same hammer, different amount of bludgeoning us with it.

The left only cares about child modification and protecting the pedos. Economic thought, other than enslaving the populace, never crosses the left's threshold.

redseven94 said:

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Lesser of two evils is such a tired trope.

It's based on an unsubstantiated fear.

Trump is a real and present danger.

I could just 100 reasons but if you believe someone would've worse than him i don't believe we could ever have a reasoned discussion.

She's a dimwit and he understand trade. Come on dude…what are you even defending?

Can't see that?

---

This post doesn't make any sense.

Trump has strengths and weaknesses and he's a million times better then the marxists on the other side All of them.
.

He's never running again so this entire conversation is pointless

Dobro Turtlebane said:

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Daddy said:

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MemphisAg1 said:

---

Another area that showcases Trump's illiteracy on economics.

A trade deficit simply means one country buys more from another country than they buy from them.

The US is the richest and one of the more populous countries on the earth.

By that very fact, we are going to buy more from many other countries than they buy from us.

The simple fact that a trade deficit exists does not mean anything is wrong.

You must dig deeper to understand if there are unlevel playing fields where the other country is subsidizing their output to gain an advantage over you. In that case, tariffs and other measures might very well make sense.

But to categorically describe trade deficits as a rip-off is kindergarten-level thinking.

---

How do you know the economic theory which is in the college of liberal arts is factual? Trump sees the country as a business. And my business buys more of its crap from you business and vice versa then I'm losing money


Who's to say that the same Marxist higher levels of learning that are indoctrinating your kids from top to bottom in school causing them to get dumber didn't start with us or or our parents? You know what satans real name is right? Father of all lies

He's actually right even though I know what you're talking about with economics

If you are buying more from someone and they are buying from you it means that you are as a country losing money. Now maybe that's preferred because you like their goods better than your own. Maybe the utils for Caribbean coffee or Central American coffee or whatever is better than the coffee beans that we can make.

That's why every country in the world is ripping us off. There's a reason we're over 70 trillion in debt State debt unfunded liabilities it's not all Medicare and welfare. We are borrowing money to buy from overseas many times with technology and goods that some other country re-engineered and infringed on patents from our own people.

Free trade is a lot like Marxist Utopia it's great in theory but it's never applicable.

Economic efficiencies with trade is theory
It really works great on paper

Keynesianism economics is a sham. It teaches you to spend yourself out of a recession. That's called debt. Eventually the debt has to be recalled. The debtor becomes enslaved.

This is like people saying that the Federal reserve system is good for America

No it's ripped us off. Private Bank controlled by private families. That's why they tried to kill Andrew Jackson or they did I guess.

We're going to find out we were lied to about a lot of things

---

You kinda lost the bubble at the end of your rant there.

First, my economics and finance degrees are from the college of business not the college of liberal arts. Business schools are incentivized to create better businesses; they are rarely liberal. Second, at the terminal level you learn your field by reading 100s of research papers going back to Fama, Hayek, Jensen & Meckling, Becker, Solow, etc. Then you take their actual math models and do them yourself to prove or disprove their thesis. Then you pick apart their research. There is virtually zero receive mode. I've also spent years doing macro for a PE firm, where the math models rubber meets the EBITDA road

Next, a country is not a business. The value of money does not change at a business level. If you think Trump sees the country as a business, that's really an indictment of him.

Nextly, a trade deficit is not the federal debt. That he's even ranting about the two things in the same rant is another indictment that he doesn't know what he's talking about

Last, you cant have weak dollar policies, high tariffs, and be the world reserve currency. Economics is the study of tradeoffs and decision making, just like every other economic liberal Trump refuses to understand that decisions have tradeoffs and consequences

---

Paul Krugman won a Noble prize in your field.

Your field is overrun but some complete dumb ****s

Sid Farkas said:

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The markets have Trump fatigue. They're poised to punish him. This doesn't help.

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Markets are up BIG today.

I don't think President Trump is economically illiterate, I think he has a good intuition but lacks a clear way to say it. If I could translate the OP to something more precise it would be something like

Interest rates in the United States should be very low because our credit rests on enormous productive power. Our country is booming with new investment. When we run persistent trade deficits, American demand is financing productive capacity abroad instead of at home. A trade deficit is not literally a "loss," but it can represent lost domestic factories, skills, capital formation, and industrial capability. We are using our market to strengthen the productive powers of other nations while weakening our own. That cannot continue indefinitely. LOWER THE COST OF CAPITAL AND BUILD AMERICAN PRODUCTIVE POWER , AND FAST!

Quote:

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. If you are buying more from someone and they are buying from you it means that you are as a country losing money. Now maybe that's preferred because you like their goods better than your own. Maybe the utils for Caribbean coffee or Central American coffee or whatever is better than the coffee beans that we can make.

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If you think of the dollar as just another product in society, how does your analysis change?

Certainly, we did not invent the dollar. We have not even produced the dollar for most of its history. A massive percentage of the dollars in the world live outside of the United States.

If you keep score in total living standards, but merely think of the dollar as a product that you are sending away, does your analysis still work for you?

The question is how many countries that we have trade deficit have policies in place to artificially create the environment for trade deficit?

Silent For Too Long said:

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Dobro Turtlebane said:

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Daddy said:

---

MemphisAg1 said:

---

Another area that showcases Trump's illiteracy on economics.

A trade deficit simply means one country buys more from another country than they buy from them.

The US is the richest and one of the more populous countries on the earth.

By that very fact, we are going to buy more from many other countries than they buy from us.

The simple fact that a trade deficit exists does not mean anything is wrong.

You must dig deeper to understand if there are unlevel playing fields where the other country is subsidizing their output to gain an advantage over you. In that case, tariffs and other measures might very well make sense.

But to categorically describe trade deficits as a rip-off is kindergarten-level thinking.

---

How do you know the economic theory which is in the college of liberal arts is factual? Trump sees the country as a business. And my business buys more of its crap from you business and vice versa then I'm losing money


Who's to say that the same Marxist higher levels of learning that are indoctrinating your kids from top to bottom in school causing them to get dumber didn't start with us or or our parents? You know what satans real name is right? Father of all lies

He's actually right even though I know what you're talking about with economics

If you are buying more from someone and they are buying from you it means that you are as a country losing money. Now maybe that's preferred because you like their goods better than your own. Maybe the utils for Caribbean coffee or Central American coffee or whatever is better than the coffee beans that we can make.

That's why every country in the world is ripping us off. There's a reason we're over 70 trillion in debt State debt unfunded liabilities it's not all Medicare and welfare. We are borrowing money to buy from overseas many times with technology and goods that some other country re-engineered and infringed on patents from our own people.

Free trade is a lot like Marxist Utopia it's great in theory but it's never applicable.

Economic efficiencies with trade is theory
It really works great on paper

Keynesianism economics is a sham. It teaches you to spend yourself out of a recession. That's called debt. Eventually the debt has to be recalled. The debtor becomes enslaved.

This is like people saying that the Federal reserve system is good for America

No it's ripped us off. Private Bank controlled by private families. That's why they tried to kill Andrew Jackson or they did I guess.

We're going to find out we were lied to about a lot of things

---

You kinda lost the bubble at the end of your rant there.

First, my economics and finance degrees are from the college of business not the college of liberal arts. Business schools are incentivized to create better businesses; they are rarely liberal. Second, at the terminal level you learn your field by reading 100s of research papers going back to Fama, Hayek, Jensen & Meckling, Becker, Solow, etc. Then you take their actual math models and do them yourself to prove or disprove their thesis. Then you pick apart their research. There is virtually zero receive mode. I've also spent years doing macro for a PE firm, where the math models rubber meets the EBITDA road

Next, a country is not a business. The value of money does not change at a business level. If you think Trump sees the country as a business, that's really an indictment of him.

Nextly, a trade deficit is not the federal debt. That he's even ranting about the two things in the same rant is another indictment that he doesn't know what he's talking about

Last, you cant have weak dollar policies, high tariffs, and be the world reserve currency. Economics is the study of tradeoffs and decision making, just like every other economic liberal Trump refuses to understand that decisions have tradeoffs and consequences

---

Paul Krugman won a Noble prize in your field.

Your field is overrun but some complete dumb ****s

---

Every field has idiots, and most people in finance don't care about Nobel Prize winners - Miller and Modigliani won the Nobel Prize but Stewart Myers didn't.

There have been spectacular engineering failures in US history, from the catastrophic (Hyatt walkway collapse) to the annoying (PowerShift transmission). Does that mean engineering math is useless?

ETA: I thought it was pretty much settled that the Nobel Prize organization was useless and should be ignored. Obama and Yassar Arafat won Nobel Prizes