I don’t even know where to start. 1, Som1, do you think we are all ignorant? I’ve been interacting with politicians for three decades. Of all persuasions. I’m neither a democrat, nor a socialist. I have voted for conservative candidates and will do so again when there is one to vote for. You think Trump is a conservative?
SOm1, your answer on trade is completely nonsensical. I don’t think you understand what you are talking about. For example, on Aluminum – the US does not have and cannot make the raw materials in anywhere near needed quantities. It is a raw material, a resource extracted from the ground. They can only get it elsewhere, primarily from Canada. But Trump saw fit to put a tariff on Aluminum from Canada, even though a) he just signed a new free trade deal OF HIS OWN MAKING with them, b) It will raise prices for US manufacturers of anything using aluminum, because Canadian producers aren’t going to just eat the cost increase, they will pass it on to the people who buy their aluminum, which now costs them more to export. And as the manufacturers in the US pay more, they will have to either raise their prices, or lose profit margins. which do you think they will choose? c) the countries who were slapped with arbitrary and useless tariffs have all established their own equal and retaliatory tariffs on US materials or goods coming in to their countries in response. So their economies are looking elsewhere to buy cheaper goods not affected by counter-tariffs, and US producers are selling less of their product to these countries. The net effect of Trump’s trade grandstanding costs American jobs, decreases American exports, increases the trade deficit he always complains about, increases prices for American consumers, contravenes his own trade agreements and thus reduces both sales and personal income taxes collected by the US government…
Nothing about Trump’s trade actions as described is capitalist – it is interventionist policy, just like command economies in the 20th century used, to their detriment and ultimate demise. It does absolutely nothing to protect America, American jobs, American prices. It has embarrassed and likely hurt the reelection chances of republican governors across the country, whose state economies depend on Free Trade with their largest trading partner (for most of them, that’s Canada).
There simply isn’t any way to defend his actions on this that makes any sense. Please don’t embarrass yourself any further. Stop trying.
As I wrote and you both ignored, its not about Biden (who, for the record, condemned riots and looting, repeatedly, and even Trump doesn’t accuse him of being a socialist (just of being weak and thus potentially controlled by socialists – who couldn’t even manage to seriously influence their party’s platform at the convention, as powerful as they are). I don’t need to be convinced that conservative politics (for me, of the moderate sort) are better for all of us. Throwing mud at Biden is irrelevant to me – and to increasingly large numbers of the American electorate. I’m not basing my opinion on Biden’s strengths and weaknesses. I know he is not ideal. Its simply a matter of what a piece of work the President is, how he has failed the American people and betrayed its allies, how he has spread his immorality around him like a virus, how he shares no values with any competent military commander I have ever met or read about, and how his incompetence in handling COVID has cost too many lives.