Hey, MAGA, Here's Proof Yer Boy's Not Good at This

Trump is asking you to trust his prediction that we're on a path to prosperity...

There’s only one indication that Pres. Donald Trump’s massive, virtually unprecedented, constantly shifting tariffs will work. And by “work” I mean the lowest possible bar: Leave America at least slightly better off than it was.

• Shared prosperity.

• Higher standards of living.

• Greater availability of fulfilling work.

All, by the way, compared to where we were at the end of 2024, when things were actually pretty good, thanks.

Our economic woes stemmed from issues having nothing to do with tariffs or imports. The costs of housing, medical care, and education were driving economic anxiety.

Trump’s plan doesn’t involve importing any of that (some drugs will be tariffed, actually). And most Americans didn’t and don’t want the manufacturing jobs that we’re now supposed to sacrifice for.

But tariffs are somehow supposed to transform the global economy so thoroughly that the net economic effect for Americans will not only undo the short-term economic pain, but lift us above where we were — despite not addressing housing or health or education.

Even Trump’s own team leaders have given us, shall we say, mixed predictions. For instance, the American dream for generations has been that the next generation will be better educated, more prosperous, with better jobs.

Coal miners toiled in dangerous darkness to send their kids to law school.

But according to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, tariff success means an end to upward mobility, with factory jobs for generations, minding the robots that build phones and cars:

“It's time to train people not to do the jobs of the past, but to do the great jobs of the future. This is the new model where you work in these kinds of plants for the rest of your life and your kids work here and your grandkids work here.”

For the rest of your life.

And that’s a salesman for the plan. But what about the guy behind the plan?

Trump’s offered no evidence it will work. The intellectual father of Trump’s tariffs plan is fictional. Trump points to his first term China tariffs as proof, but they were orders of magnitude smaller and also didn’t help.

So all we have is Trump’s word. I just picked up his 2011 book, “Time To Get Tough,” curious if he said anything about tariffs. Not much.

But I was struck by the bold predictions he was willing to make. And that’s what his tariff promise is: A prediction about how they’ll work out. So I was interested to see the predictions he made in his book. Some of which I will now share.

• I’m looking at the revised edition, which came out during Pres. Barack Obama’s second term. The national debt, he writes, “has soared past $18 trillion,” which would put the revised edition in 2015/2016. The debt, he warned, “will soon cross $20 trillion.”

Newsfucker, it did. It happened on Sept. 8, 2017, when Pres. Donald Trump signed a law suspending the debt ceiling and his government borrowed an additional $300 billion.

By the time his first term ended, the national debt increased to $26 trillion. As of the end of last year, it had topped $35 trillion.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), former Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC), and the Committee for a Responsible Budget all agree that Trump’s first-term policies added about $8 trillion to the national debt.

So, technically, this prediction of Trump’s was true! But let’s look at another one, a three-parter.

• In an apparently unrevised section, Trump writes that, “if we reelect Barack Obama…

  • “…The dollar will fall as the world’s international currency.

  • “Our economy will collapse again…

  • “And China will replace America as the world’s number one economic power.”

Let’s review.

Here’s a chart of the strength of the U.S. dollar from Jan. 2008 through last month. Obama’s second term began in Jan. 2012

The dollar, in short, did not fall as the world’s international currency.

How about the collapse of our economy? See if you can spot the collapse of our economy in the Fed’s chart of gross domestic product:

That GDP dive — with the Fed throwing shade at Trump’s Covid recession — was, of course, during Trump’s first term. Under Pres. Joe Biden, as you can see, the trajectory of GDP growth not only resumed but improved over what he inherited. The only time the GDP actually went down since then was…in the first quarter of Trump’s second term. Thanks to the tariffs.

Obama’s re-election would also make China the world’s top economic power, Trump predicted.

The most common metric for this is GDP, by which Trump’s prediction failed. The U.S. still has the world’s largest GDP. But, ironically, that’s arguably skewed to some extent by the strength of the dollar, which basically values the shit we make more than the shit other people make.

If we go by that metric — Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) — then technically Trump was right, but not in a way that does him any favors:

For one thing, anyone looking at these numbers could’ve told you where these lines were going. For another thing, the disparity got even worse under Trump1.0. And if we wanna get really persnickety — which we do — Republicans in Congress hampered Obama’s ability to invest in American productivity as much as he aspired to.

He writes that “America will be engulfed by the economic tsunami that is the People’s Republic of China—my guess is by 2016 if we don’t act fast.”

There’s more — I’ve barely started and I’m already done — but I think the basic point about Trump’s Nostradamus abilities stands. I do want to flag a couple things that speak to his mercuriality and lack of seriousness when it comes to economic policy:

“I’m for free and fair trade. After all, I do business all over the world.”

He’s for free and fair trade. Which is exactly what he’s now against. Now he wants American products produced in America, regardless of whether trade is free or fair as a result.

He has a whole chapter about how Presidents Obama and George W. Bush should have taken oil revenues from Iraq to give to the families of dead and injured American troops. He went on to become the third president not to do that because it’s batshit.

But also, even within individual chapters, his language shifts to suit the needs of whatever point he’s trying to make at the moment.

For instance, he says the number of people who rely on government assistance is shameful (without saying that’s because our system favors capital over labor and distributes income inequitably to the top). And to give his point moral heft, he says:

“In the United States, the most prosperous nation in the history of human civilization, our people are going hungry.”

That’s page 3. On literally the very next page, he writes:

“If we get tough and make the hard choices, we can make America a rich nation—and respected—once again.”

My dude, what happened to our country on page 3-1/2?!? On page 3 we’re the most prosperous ever and on page four it’ll take hard choices to make us rich? If both are true he’s literally saying no country has ever been rich.

Of course, that’s not his point. He just says stuff. Some stuff on page 3. Some stuff on page 4.

Ironically, somewhere on page 3-1/2, he’s soclose to getting it. America is the most prosperous country. And its people do go hungry.

So obviously the problem isn’t other countries. But Trump can’t see that. Which is why now we’re at economic war with the global economy. And our people are about to get hungrier.

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TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.

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