Shameless, Shameless.
It's his superpower
Once upon a time, Republicans insisted that Character Matters! It was the mantra of the 1996 Presidential campaign. President Clinton, we were reminded, was a scoundrel, an adulterer, maybe even a rapist, with an ambivalent acquaintance with the truth. So what if the economy was turning around on his watch, character matters!
Those Republicans are gone now. Some have died. Some abandoned the Grand Old Party, or were abandoned by it. Some—too many, sadly—have decided character doesn't matter as much winning, or owning libs, or getting tax breaks for very wealthy people, or just currying Donald Trump’s favor.
During the recent Presidential campaign and particularly in the last 100-ish days, we heard a lot about tariffs, beautiful tariffs, that will bring gobs of money from countries that have heretofore been ripping us off. They’d pay big bucks for the privilege of selling us stuff cheaper than we can make it ourselves. So the story has gone. Economists and businessmen, and just about everyone who understands what tariffs are (who aren't named Peter Navarro, Scott Bessent, Howard Lutnik, or Donald Trump) have pointed out that that isn’t how tariffs work. The tariff is paid by the importer who passes the cost on to the merchant, who pass it on to the customer.
The tariff, as we were also told by others during the recent campaign, would slap a tax on Americans (and a pretty steep one at that) along with sending our’s and much of the world’s economies into a tailspin. Moreover, if tariffs were supposed to offset lost revenue from cutting taxes on high income earners—as Trump has suggested—we could expect the deficit and national debt to explode.
Among Trump’s tariff-happy advisors, Peter Navarro is perhaps deluded or deranged enough to buy, and sell, the tariff hype. Scott Bessent and Howard Lutnik know better but are along for the ride. What about Trump? Does he actually believe his own shtick? It's easy to think he is ignorant enough or befuddled enough to believe his own scam.
Until this shows up.
Trump does know how tariffs work. He squeezes China into his “Truth” because admitting China isn't paying a red cent of tariff money might just be more than his MAGA base can absorb. But he clearly knows the burden falls on American retailerswho will pass it on to the customer. So he tries to bully Walmart into holding their prices down. So much for markets and free enterprise. So much for being a business genius.
By the way, the “BILLIONS OF DOLLARS” made by Walmart made “last year, far more than expected” acknowledges that the Biden economy Trump “rescued” us from was the most dynamic in recent memory. If only we had that economy back…
We are learning that hard way that character indeed matters. Bill Clinton may have had an ambivalent acquaintance with the truth. Donald Trump seems to have never made the acquaintance at all; leave aside his myriad moral failings and criminal acts. A person of character can be shamed into proper behavior when they have strayed. Trump cannot be shamed and so is immune to the things that drive human beings toward decency. It’s his superpower. It’s our peril.