I am weary to my marrow of the deep moral and intellectual sickness of the right

[DirkGently]

67. I was thinking of his recent "import tariff" proposals

There seem to be few things Trump relishes more than threatening to slap fees on other country’s goods. He proposed eliminating corporate taxes in favor of a 20% tax on imports and a 15% tax on American companies who outsource in his 2011 book “Time To Get Tough.“ More recently, he has called for a 35% tax on Mexican auto imports and threatened to “do something very severe” to force Mexico to finance a border fence, possibly punitive tariffs. And when it comes to China, another favorite Trump bogeyman, he offered this memorable message in a 2011 speech: “Listen, you motherf—ers, we’re going to tax you 25%!”

Trump, like many populist politicians, is a fierce critic of free trade deals that like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which was signed by President Bill Clinton, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is currently under negotiation. When it comes to aggressively raising tariffs, however, his proposals appear to be unique within the 2016 field in either party.

There’s not a lot of detail to Trump’s suggestions, making them hard to fully evaluate, but trade experts from across the political spectrum warn that most of his threatened tariffs would violate decades of binding trade deals negotiated by previous administrations and agreed to by previous Congresses.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/donald-trump-wants-tax-the-world-even-legal

And the bit about petition Ford to cancel a plant in Mexico.

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/elections/2015/06/16/trump-press-ford-cancel-mexican-plant/28816173/


He's making an odd conservative / populist argument, which is not particularly well-thought-out, but I think it's this departure from the stock Republican playbook that's catching fire among conservatives.

It could -- COULD, mind you -- help fracture and dissolve the monolithic Republican rhetoric, in ways that I theorize could help.

Republicans have turned conservativism into pure corporatism, which really shouldn't be a thing among any large group of voters. There are more populist-minded conservatives out there, and if that switch gets flipped, we could -- conceivably -- gain more credence for policies that actually benefit the majority of Americans.

Maybe.