Bad Math And Fascism On The Sunday Shows -- Wonkette [View all]

[erronis]

https://www.wonkette.com/p/bad-math-and-fascism-on-the-sunday

While everyone was out celebrating Mother’s Day, your dutiful Wonkette was viewing lying and stupidity from motherfuckers on the Sunday shows.

So let’s dive right in!

The Math Isn’t Mathing

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick made dual appearances on CNN’s “State Of The Union” and “Fox News Sunday” to remind us that “with great sycophancy, comes no responsibility.”

On CNN, Lutnick once again tried to spin a backwards look at how tariffs work.

BASH: You mentioned the UK agreement. You were the lead negotiator there, […] you mentioned some of the aspects of it. But one other aspect is that it keeps in place a 10 percent across-the-board tariff on goods imported to the US from the UK. As you know, the cost of tariffs are paid by American consumers. We have been talking about this. So should Americans be prepared?

LUTNICK: Well, I disagree with that, you know.

BASH: Well, OK. But many — most economists, I would say, disagree with you on that. And we have seen it being passed off time and time again to the American consumer. […] Is the 10 percent tariff that we're seeing in the framework for the UK going to be in place for the foreseeable future?

LUTNICK: So, we do expect a 10 percent baseline tariff to be in place for the foreseeable future. But don't buy the silly arguments that the US consumer pays. Businesses, their job is to try to sell to the American consumer. And domestically produced products are not going to have that tariff. […]

BASH: So, who's going to eat the tariffs?

LUTNICK: They're going to have to compete. What happens is, the businesses and the countries primarily eat the tariff.

That’s not how tariffs have ever worked. Reminder that THIS Scene was from a Reagan-era movie, starring a former Nixon speechwriter, explaining how tariffs work (and fail) when historically implemented.