I am over Donald Trump.  I am still anti anti Trump, meaning that I view his worst enemies as some of the most despicable people on the planet.  This includes many of the people in his cabinet and his advisors, who pretend that they are on his side.  Believe me, people like Pompeo, Bolton, and even Pence, are not on Trump’s side unless he completely capitulates to all of their demands.

I didn’t vote for Trump, and I saw a lot of problems with his policy proposals.  I have long thought he is completely ignorant at best when it comes to economics.  He also has an authoritarian streak as part of his ego.

With that said, I do appreciate his disruption of the establishment.  He hasn’t drained the swamp, but he has certainly helped to expose the swamp for anyone who cares to look.  This includes the establishment media.

I held out a little hope that there would be more peace under Trump.  The best I can say for him so far is that he hasn’t yet started any new major wars.  He has continued the old wars, and he is on the verge of getting into a hot war with Venezuela and/or Iran.  The U.S. government has already enacted war against these countries to a certain extent in the form of sanctions.  There just hasn’t been any official shooting and bombing yet.

Although I don’t think Trump would have pushed for these conflicts on his own, he is still to blame for surrounding himself with many war hawks from the establishment.

If he can somehow avoid a major new war, he does have a decent chance for re-election.  Of course, there are a lot of variables.

Trump is loved by his base, and he is hated by his opponents.  It is a vitriolic hatred like never before.  Hatred is nothing new in politics, but there really does seem to be something special about Trump.  There is such a thing as Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS).

I do not have TDS. You can oppose his policies without having TDS.  The people with TDS obsess over his petty tweets on Twitter.  They go along with made up stories about Russia. They really want to believe that Trump is a racist and that he hates women.  They really want to see Trump’s tax returns.  The list of pettiness goes on.

They mostly do not oppose Trump for his foreign interventions, or that is a secondary concern if they do.  They don’t oppose Trump for his massive spending and big government policies. If anything, they believe he is somehow doing the opposite, despite the facts in front of them.

It’s Still the Economy, Stupid

There is going to be a small number – maybe a few million – who will decide the 2020 presidential election.  They are the people who don’t necessarily love or hate Trump.  They are people who may or may not vote.  Sometimes it just comes down to which side is more enthusiastic.

As with every election, many people vote their pocketbook.  The economy matters to them because that is what impacts them most.  Even though the president doesn’t have near as much impact on the economy as given credit (or blame) for, this is typically the number one issue.

Trump has been taking credit for the supposed booming economy.  I don’t think it is booming.  The stock market is booming and unemployment is low for those looking for work, but it doesn’t reflect how people are doing.  Life is expensive.  Real wages do not seem to be keeping up with the cost of living, starting with health insurance premiums.  Trump and the Republicans did not repeal Obamacare.

Life is expensive because of government.  It is all of the regulations, the taxation, and the monetary inflation. Trump has made it worse with his tariffs, and now he is threatening to raise tariffs on Chinese products even more.  Because of this, we pay more for cars, appliances, and other consumer products than we otherwise would have.

But most people do not see it.  They do not realize that prices went up because of the tariffs.  They’ll blame greedy corporations, but they somehow miss the elephant in the room, which is the government.

However, Trump may not get off so easy with his stupid tariffs.  His boneheaded negotiations are costing us a lot of money, but he is taking the blame in another form.  When he announced he was considering raising the rate on tariffs, the stock market plummeted.  It was easy for the financial media to link his threat of tariffs with the falling stock market.

While I think tariffs are quite harmful to our living standards, I don’t think his tariffs will cause a recession.  However, if a recession just happens to occur as he is hiking tariffs, then Trump will get extra blame for it.

Most of the blame for a recession should be put on the Federal Reserve for its massive monetary expansion from 2008 to 2014.  This misallocated resources that will need to be corrected by the market. This is why it is appropriate to call a recession a correction.  Unfortunately, the Fed doesn’t typically allow the full correction to occur.

Trump can’t escape the Austrian Business Cycle Theory.  The yield curve already inverted once in 2019, and it is near inversion again.  But if we go into an obvious recession before November 2020, some people may be forgiving of Trump.  Not everyone will blame him.  That is why he is playing with fire with his tariffs.  If his tariffs coincide with a recession, it will put more blame on Trump, even if his tariffs didn’t directly cause the recession.

This is why his stupid tariffs may be his downfall.  He deserves to go down for many reasons.  Unfortunately, we aren’t going to like whoever replaces him.