I used to be one of Dana Perino’s biggest fans. That all changed yesterday with her inexplicable and openly hateful tirade, during which she bashed Donald Trump on every point he made in his speech announcing his candidacy for president. I’ve never before seen that side of the otherwise sweet girl next door and former Press Secretary to George W. Bush.
During the first six and a half minutes of the video (below) fellow Fiver Eric Bolling introduced the segment on Trump’s announcement, extolling his fresh, pro-American rhetoric, as little Miss Dana lit into both Bolling and Trump, suggesting they were living on another planet, as she slammed Trump for what she called the “absurdity” of his platform.
Saving her most bitter scorn for Trump’s claim that he will build a Great Wall of Mexico along our southern border and make Mexico pay for it, Perino snapped, insisting that such a plan was impossible.
No, it isn’t impossible, Dana! In fact it is pretty easy. It is called an import tariff. With control of both houses of Congress it should be fairly simple for a Republican president to pull off. Slap a tariff of, oh say, 50% on all Mexican imports, from tequila to tortillas. It shouldn’t take long to pay for a big, secure wall. I’m shocked that you actually worked in a presidential administration and don’t understand such a fundamental concept of foreign trade.
I find Trump’s rhetoric refreshing and uplifting. He is the only candidate I can recall since Reagan who is actually laying out a specific pro-American platform. Instead of running from the mention of hot-button issues like amnesty or outright approving amnesty and open borders (Jeb Bush), Trump is unabashed in putting America and Americans first.
I have been screaming for years for pro-American foreign trade policy from Washington. The most valuable thing in the history of the world is the American consumer market. We own it, we control it, and we are giving it away for FREE! to countries that do not necessarily have America’s best interests in mind. Consider our trade relationship with China. The Chinese are eating our lunch. In 2014 China became the largest economy in the world, a position previously held by the United States (since around 1870), all thanks to the American consumer market and several hundred idiots inside the beltway.
It isn’t difficult to connect the dots between an import tariff and a new boom in the American economy. This is how simple it is. The US imposes an import tariff of 50%, meaning that the Chinese widget that used to cost $150, now costs $225. Immediately, American manufacturing is competitive again with foreign manufacturing. I am just using 50% as an example. Maybe 25% will do. Maybe it will take 100%. Whatever is necessary to restart the American manufacturing engine, do it NOW! Every segment of our economy will see a boom, from jobs to wages to our tax base. We are currently paying the Chinese nearly $100 million a day in interest alone (based upon debt growth since 2011). In effect, we are borrowing money from the Chinese that they are making off of us, increasing the debt load on our children and grandchildren. This is stupid!
The good news is we are still in the driver’s seat, as long as the American consumer market is the world’s primary economic engine. But we are watching it shrink to the detriment of our future. At the rate we are going, in 20 years China will be the US of the 1960s, and the US will be the China of the 1960s. When that happens and the US is no longer relevant, then the global economic engine will flourish on its own without the historically dominant participation of the United States, and we will have lost all the trade leverage we once enjoyed. Why are we doing this? The only conclusion I can come to is we are stupid. Donald Trump isn’t!
Please see my article from January, 2014 (It’s Time to Stop Being Stupid!) on this issue and how to fix it. Trump is right!
