'I almost choked': Economist highlights gobsmacking moment of Trump's speech - Alternet

[justaprogressive]

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman found himself particularly floored by a moment in President Donald Trump's address to Congress on Tuesday in which he made boasts about boosting auto manufacturing even as his tariffs on Canada and Mexico threaten to cripple auto supply chains.

Writing on his Substack page, Krugman explained how car production in the United States will be hampered by the tariffs on America's two biggest trading partners given the way that cars are assembled across all three countries.

"Automobile production, which is deeply integrated across our northern and southern borders — there really isn’t a U.S. auto industry, there’s a North American industry operating in all three countries — will be especially hard hit," he wrote. "I almost choked when Trump declared last night that 'we are going to have growth in the auto industry like nobody has ever seen.' Well, I guess we’ve never seen a large downturn in auto production outside a major recession, which is not to say that we won’t get a recession too."

Taking stock of Trump's economic policies as a whole, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk's slash-and-burn approach to federal workers, Krugman argued that the United States right now is "trapped in a burning Tesla."

https://www.alternet.org/send/trump-economist-gobsmacked/

[chia]

1. Money quote: The U.S. right now is "trapped in a burning Tesla."

[peggysue2]

3. Yup

That pretty much says it all in a very visceral manner, the sort of thing that sticks with people.

[NNadir]

4. Beat me to it. Great line. Let's recall it as the shit starts flying off the fan blades.

[chia]

7. GMTA. :) It's as apt and expressive as can be, right?

It's how I feel for sure, watching helplessly as my country burns and half of voters and who knows how many non-voters don't care. They're not engaged, they're not recognizing the danger, not educating themselves in facts and reality, playing their kazoos while democracy slips away.

[NNadir]

8. They will find what's going to happen impossible to ignore.

[sop]

5. Teslas don't have normal mechanical door handles, when they crash and burn occupants can't get out.

[NNadir]

2. What a great metaphor, "US trapped in a burning Tesla."

[travelingthrulife]

6. America is 'trapped in a burning Tesla'. I like that.

[Srkdqltr]

9. Isn't he backtracking on auto tariffs already?

[AZJonnie]

11. Wouldn't surprise me, he and President Musk are probably making millions gaming the stock market

And since as far as the Federal Government goes, all laws are whatever Trump or Bondi says they are, what he's doing is of course totally legal.

[CrispyQ]

10. When I was car shopping last year the three I considered were made in Mexico, Canada, & South Korea.

Who knows where all the parts for those cars were made. He thinks if he makes everything too expensive to import, we'll make it all here. It took decades to build all those factories we abandoned by offshoring. Just like it took over a decade to build a good pandemic preparedness team, under three different presidents BTW, one of them GW Bush. You know you're fucked when GW Bush looks like a okay option.

[Raftergirl]

12. It's obvious none of the misfits in this administration took Econ 101/102.