WASHINGTON Tuesday morning brought a textbook illustration of Trumponomics.
Under this economic theory defined roughly as when its sunny, credit me; when it rains, blame them President Trump has been claiming sole responsibility for a bull market that began nearly eight years before his presidency.
But this month, wild swings in the market threaten to erase the years gains, and on Tuesday, Trump offered an explanation: The Democrats did it! The market is now taking a little pause people want to see what happens with the Midterms, he tweeted. If you want your Stocks to go down, I strongly suggest voting Democrat.
Most attribute the swoon to higher tariffs set off by Trumps trade war and higher interest rates aggravated by Trumps tax cut. But Trumponomics holds otherwise.
Previous lessons from Trumponomics 101:
During the campaign, Trump said that official unemployment figures were phony and a hoax and that the rate was really as high as 42 percent. Now he highlights the official figures as evidence of his success.
During the campaign, the rising stock market was a big, fat, ugly bubble. After his election, it became a reflection of Trumpian genius at least until Democrats caused it to tank.
Less than three hours after his stock-market tweet Tuesday, Trump issued a new boast: Consumer Confidence hits highest level since 2000. To summarize: Blame Democrats for stocks going down but give Trump credit for confidence simultaneously going up.
In fairness, the theory of Trumponomics is more complex than merely blaming Democrats (or the Federal Reserve) for bad things. It also rests on the presumption that Democrats are evil and their ideas ruinous. This can be seen in a report released by the White House last week, by the presidents Council of Economic Advisers.
Titled The Opportunity Costs of Socialism, the report finds that Democrats who wish to expand the popular Medicare program into Medicare-for-all are in league with Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong and other leaders whose policies have resulted in deaths in purges, massacres, concentration camps, forced migration, and both escape attempts and famines.
The White House economists evidence tying todays Democrats to murderous figures from the 20th century? They used a similar word.
Mao described the ruthless economic exploitation and political oppression of the peasants by the landlord class, the White House writes. Expressing similar concerns, current American senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have stated that large corporations exploit human misery and insecurity.
Further, the council argues, The socialist narrative names the oppressors of the vulnerable, such as the bourgeoisie (Marx), kulaks (Lenin), landlords (Mao), and giant corporations (Sanders and Warren).
From there, the White House officials argue that certain Democrats health-care proposals are similar in spirit to Lenin and Mao and on par with communist dictators disastrous attempts at forced collectivization of agriculture. With an intellectual rigor closer to Groucho than Karl, the White House lists socialists alternately as Marx, Stalin, Senator Sanders, Senator Warren, and Fidel Castro, and as Karl Marx to Vladimir Lenin to Mao Zedong to current American socialists.
There may be sound reasons to oppose single-payer health care, but basing 21st-century health-care policy on an analysis of Soviet agriculture is like basing the Nuclear Posture Review on experiences in the Boer War. Unsurprisingly, this treatise has some problems.
