It's Greek to me

With trade defecit, I am 99% convinced he ... hears 'deficit', and then just assumes that must be like a balance sheet defecit within a business, that a trade 'defecit' must mean some account somewhere (presumably the 'trade account') is decreasing, and the 'losses' need to either be stopped by pouring more money into that account, or stopping money from leaving it.

He just literally doesn't understand that the term 'trade deficit' has a different meaning in an economic context.

You could be talking ... per country, per economic sector, per category of physical producf... or all those things summed together, etc.

He seems to think that the US Federal Government budget just is the same thing as the entire US economy, that there is some US gov ledger just labelled 'trade balance', and that it is in the red, and that means uh... the government is losing money.

I genuinely think that he is conflating 'the deficit', as in, the amount the US gov has to borrow every quarter or year to keep funding itself... with 'the trade deficit'.

They both have deficit in them, must be the same thing, right?

He does not grasp that... the economy's GDP can grow just fine even with a persistent trade deficit if it figures out how to 'export' non physical goods... you know, services? Talented workers doing desk jobs of some kind, finance, software, or exporting art or movies or music or something non physical?

Yes, hollowing out is a thing, neoliberalism errodes and corrodes the old baseline foundation of an economy... but you solve that with specific, targeted proposals to protect and promote certain specific either vital industries or industries you can achieve a reasonable regional or global comparative advantage in, in some way.

Maybe part of that plan is some specific, precise, targeted tariffs on very specific things.

But he just has absolutely no understanding of macroeconomic policy... at all.

Remember when in his first term, his actual plan for restarting American domestic manufacturing... was to go, one by one, to every manufacturer, and attempt to negotiate, personally, some kind of deal whereby they would not close, or would not lay people off?

I think he actually called himself 'the negotiator in chief' during that several month span when he tried that.

He is literally too myopic and self centered to be able to concieve of a large scale plan that is not personally micromanaged by him.

He doesn't understand that you would have to craft a detailed and comprehensive set of policies to subsidize local manufacturing... which you would then wash your hands of, step away, and watch it work... because the economy is millions of people making decisions, and you can't personally be in all those meetings.

With tariffs, it seems very clear to me that he genuinely believes he ... is taxing another country directly, like he is taxing their exports... not our own imports.

He thought he could force Mexico to pay to build the wall. At no point did he even come close to describing a mechanism for this... but his big dumb idiot fraudster mobster bully brain doesn't care, that's for the eggheads to figure out, he just 'sets the terms' and 'makes the deal'.

Combine all this insanity together and you get a moron who thinks he can directly tax other countries (he can't, unless he literally invades and subjugates them and makes them vassal states) to balance an account that doesn't even exist, but he can't figure that part out because he is conflating two terms that both have the word 'deficit' in them.

Like a goddamn woo woo person who thinks the 'energy' stored in a battery or nuclear bomb is exactly the same kind of 'energy' that an upbeat and enthusiastic person brings into a social gathering.

...

More details about his insanity regarding the CHIPS Act:

The CHIPS Act is an actual example of that kind of targeted domestic industrial policy that spurs and protects a vital domestic manufacturing sector.

You know, that thing Biden did.

Trump has claimed he killed it, because it was bad, because Biden bad.

Then picked one of the numbers from it ($100b planned total investment from Intel over the next decade or two or three, after an $8 billion grant from the US gov to kickstart it), got the Intel CEO to do a very awkward press conference where Trump gave the impression that he had strongarmed Intel into... an agreement they had made in the last administration...

... and now Trump is trying to actually stop more CHIPS money from going to spur further similar developments, and is actually saying the CHIPS Act should be repealed.

He's just a petulant, idiot manbaby.