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“There Are A Hundred Things Like That”
Now’s a perfect time to return to Donald Trump’s kick-off speech, wherein lies an extended passage that puts the lie to the notions that Trump is incoherent and short on specific policy proposals. This digression — presumably delivered with benefit of neither notes nor teleprompter — is a hypothetical scenario describing how President Trump would handle Ford’s announcement that it plans to build a new car factory in Mexico.
Savor the gorgeous prose that wafts from the Trumpian tongue. Marvel at his recognition that a U.S. president has dictatorial powers. Admire his willingness to be vindictive when defied. Drink in the policy mastery and wisdom demonstrated by the leading GOP candidate.
Now Ford announces a few weeks ago that Ford is going to build a $2.5 billion car and truck and parts manufacturing plant in Mexico. $2.5 billion. It’s going to be one of the largest in the world. Ford – good company.
So I announced that I’m running for President. I would, one of the early things I would do, probably before I even got in, and I wouldn’t even use – you know, I know the smartest negotiators in the world.
I know the good ones, I know the bad ones, I know the overrated ones. You’ve got a lot that are overrated. They get good stories because the newspapers get buffaloed. But they’re not good.
But I know the best negotiators in the world and I’d put them one for each country. Believe me folks, we will do very, very well. Very, very well.
But I wouldn’t even waste my time with this one. I would call up the head of Ford, who I know. If I was President I’d say ‘Congratulations, I understand that you’re building a nice, $2.5 billion dollar factory in Mexico and that you’re going to take your cars and sell them to the United States. Zero tax – just flow them across the border.’
And you say to yourself, ‘How does that help us, right? Where is that good.’ It’s not.
So I’d say ‘Congratulations, that’s the good news. Let me give you the bad news. Every car, and every truck and every part manufactured in this plant that comes across the border, we’re going to charge you a 35% tax. Okay? And that tax is going to be paid simultaneously with the transaction, and that’s it.’
Now here’s what’s going to happen. If it’s not me in the position, if it’s one of these politicians that we’re running against, you know, the 400 people that we’re – and here’s what going to happen. They’re not so stupid. They know it’s not a good thing. And they may even be upset by it.
But then they’re going to get a call from their donors or probably from the lobbyists for Ford and say, ‘You can’t do that to Ford, because Ford takes care of me, and I take care of you, and you can’t do that to Ford.’
And you know what? No problem. They’re going to build in Mexico, they’re going to take away thousands of jobs. That’s very bad for us. So under President Trump, here’s what would happen: The head of Ford will call me back, I would say within an hour after I told him the bad news, but it could be he’d want to be cool and he’ll wait until the next day. You know, they want to be a little cool.
And he’ll say, ‘Please, please, please.’
He’ll beg for a little while, and I’ll say, ‘Sorry, no interest.’
Then he’ll call all sorts of political people and I’ll say, ‘Sorry fellas, no interest.’
Because I don’t need anybody’s money. It’s nice. I don’t need anybody’s money. I’m using my own money. I’m not using lobbyists, I’m not using donors. I don’t care. I’m really rich.
And by the way, I’m not even saying that to brag. That’s the kind of mindset, that’s the kind of thinking you need for this country.
So, because we’ve got to make the country rich. It sounds crass. Somebody said ‘oh, that’s crass.’ It’s not crass…
But here is what’s going to happen. After I’m called by 30 friends of mine who contributed to different campaigns, after I’m called by all of the special interests and by the donors and by the lobbyists – and they have zero chance at convincing me. Zero. I’ll get a call they next day from the head of Ford.
He’ll say, ‘Please reconsider.’
I’ll say, ‘No.’
He’ll say, ‘Mr. President, we’ve decided to move the plant back to the United States. We’re not going to build it in Mexico.’
That’s it. They’ll have no choice. They have no choice.
There are hundred things like that.
Only 99 more to go?
Image Credit: Andrew Cline / Shutterstock.com
Published in Foreign Policy
Thanks for this wonderful insight to the rambling, bumptious intellect of Donald Trump.
Ford already builds cars in Mexico. That’s where my new Ford Fusion was built. Apparently this must be news to Mr. Trump. Other American companies also manufacture products in Mexico and elsewhere around the world. Revenue claimed from those enterprises if brought back into the United States is already taxed at 35% which has resulted in roughly 3 trillion dollars permanently parked outside the country. Continuing to penalize American companies or penalizing them more is exactly the wrong message to send for any new president.
The President of the United States does not have the power to target and punitively tax one company even through executive action without it getting struck down by the courts. He can propose that a Trump-sympathizer in Congress present legislation to levy such a tax or penalty which would melt faster than an ice cube in Hell. Despite his bull-in-the-china-shop bluster, members of Congress don’t owe him anything, don’t have to kow-tow to him, don’t have to do a damn thing to advance such an absurdity or any similar brainstorm. And given the goodwill that Mr. Trump has generated with those presently in Congress it’s likely that most of his ridiculous policy solutions will be dead on arrival.
A CEO for a private company can also politely tell POTUS to go fly a kite and mind his own damn business. This may be a difficult concept for Donald Trump to grasp but the President of the United States is not a banana-republic, Communist or Fascist dictator…as much as maybe a few of them would have wanted to be.
Sounds like he’s missing something. Rather than magically and unconstitutionally taxing Ford into submission, shouldn’t President Trump be making America so fabulous that nobody would ever want to build anywhere else anyway?
Trump and his imperial presidency.
Lucky for us, if someone like this came down the pike, conservatives would band together and stop a guy like this…
I’ll bet that administrators and faculty at Wharton cringe every time Trump brags that he graduated from the school.
His boasting of having attended an Ivy League business school and of being “really rich” reminds me of Charlie the Tuna in the old Star-Kist commercials. Charlie went to great effort to show that he had “good taste.” Unfortunately, the harder you try, the more it becomes apparent you don’t.
On a related note, I remember when I was a junior and senior in high school in the early 1990s that friends were looking at University of Pennsylvania. They told me there was a missing photo taken down from their Hall of Fame and apparently it was Trump’s.
Wonder if they ever replaced it. If they did, wonder if it’s been taken down again.
Agreed with Leigh.
There are many ways in which Trump would be a bad President. But compare this to a crying Boehner who starts negotiations from the middle and trades half the defense budget for little cuts everywhere else.
It’s too bad there are no principles behind that bull head.
Do you know what the scariest aspect of a Trump presidency would be? If you think President Obama is bad about using government as a weapon against his opponents…
Fabulous. Tremendously, Phenomenally, Fabulous.
Ah.
After reading this, I’m starting to understand how he’s going to get the Mexicans to pay for The Fence.
Why not a 3,500% percent tax? That should be many times more convincing than just a measly 35%.
Imagine that a President could choose where we build things, what we import, who invests where in the most diverse global rapidly changing economy in history? The man is progressive to the core and a fool, but a clever demagogue. His success tells us a lot about how urgent it is for us to strip the Federal government of its ability and power to guide the economy. It is not just that such power leads to totalitarianism, it is impossible even with the most brilliant, fair, insightful, disinterested saintly group of planners one can imagine. Drift doesn’t work for us anymore because the default positions take us to big stagnant corrupt dysfunctional government followed by men on horse back who will gather up the power we happily give them.
Great. President Trump intends to adopt the policies of Smoot-Hawley. Presumably he also has a plan for negotiating his way out of the resulting great depression.
What he doesn’t say, as he recounts his phone calls with Ford, is how he will respond to the phone call from the President of Mexico, who will tell him: “35% tax? Muy bueno. We will now put a 35% tax on all American products imported into Mexico. And a 35% tax on the thousand barrels a day of oil that we sell you.”
And then Ford will build the plant in Mexico, and just sell that model of car to the rest of the world.
Assumes facts not in evidence, as Megyn Kelly might say.
I heard a caller on a radio program this morning say “we need to elect a strong man.” My thought, “no, we need to elect a lawful one.”
This is a Fabulous, I mean, the best example of the greatest political theory ever. It exemplifies the sheer- and it’s what America needs. We have to BE MADE GREAT AGAIN, let me be clear. The sheer Trumpiness of of it all blows me…. It’s HUGE, not small. It’s really great- like America will be when he becomes president! Not like all those other people who are stupid- he’s smart! He’s not dumb! HE’s Smart! And He knows other smart people too- the best smart people- he’s finally going to tell those dumb people what to do- THEN WE”LL BE GREAT AGAIN!
But seriously, This takes W’s ridiculous “I’m going to get OPEC on the phone and tell them to turn up the facet” line up to 11.
One small correction, N.M.: The word is “YUGE” – not “HUGE”.
Anyone who has not yet seen the movie Idiocracy needs to get his or her hands on the DVD right now. Trump is President Camacho.
I sir happen to KNOW President Camacho, and this sir is no President Camacho!
One small quibble for the esteemed Ricochet editors: In my original text, I had tried to make it clear that Trump’s entire speech – not just the Ford digression – appeared to be off-the-cuff. I certainly hope it was, because if that’s the way he writes, his problems are more serious than we thought!
N.M.: The fact that we grow ever closer to Idiocracy may be seen in the fact that, while Trump is not a former professsional wrestler like Camacho, he has been endorsed by one – Jesse Ventura.
Which isn’t surprising, as Jesse (much like Trump) was all mouth and flash with very little in-ring capabilities. I for one will wait to see who Terry Funk or The Undertaker endorses before I make my pick.
My completely apolitical wife sees the rise of Trump and Sanders as proof that the nation has gone insane.
This country went insane when we elected someone described as a “lightworker.” If anything, the insanity has proved contagious.
There’s no stupid like Democrat stupid.
But Trump’s working on that.
Sounds like something I’d expect to hear from President Soprano.
The whole thing is literally depressing, a sick feeling in the gut that doesn’t go away. (then I read the Gray’s piece on the girls and didn’t know whether to cry or shout. I didn’t shout) We have the best batch of candidates ever and along comes this guy. But what is he? Maybe he’s a transitional progressive, a post cold war progressive savior. He’ll pull power toward himself, blaming congress and the bureaucracy for ineptitude or cowardice, he’ll be nationalistic, chauvinistic and ultimately militaristic. It would be a progressive movement that sheds it’s anti military, anti US, anti capitalism hangover from when our enemy was the socialist homeland. Now we’re it so we get to be welfare state, nanny state and military industrial state. It’ll be pragmatic the way the Fascists were when they left the Socialist international because nationalism proved a more powerful organizing principle than international socialism. It had to start on our side of the isle because Democrats have difficulty learning new things.’ We’ll avoid this new progressive this time around, (unless he runs as a third party candidate and we get 4 more years of the old kind) but unless we perform radical surgery on Washington, they’ll be back again and again and almost certainly in the other party where they will be more comfortable and welcome. Sorry about that thought, must have been the Cameron Gray piece.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/422519/donald-trump-policy-positions-incoherent
John Penfold,
From reading the comments from Trump “supporters” (more on the quotes in a minute), I have been able to get them down to two basic types:
1. Hoping for a strongman: More prevalent among people who don’t follow politics closely. Since Washington/democracy is broken, we need someone who will bend the parties to his will, which is the will of the people. Sounds familiar, but I can’t be sure…
2. Hoping for an arsonist: More prevalent among political junkies. Often prefaces statement with “I’m not a Trump supporter, but…”. Bitterly disappointed in the GOP(e), they have a cynic’s view of the system, find it hopeless and seek to use Trump as a literal tool to smash the Republican party to pieces and then “let it burn”. Somehow believes that a new third party (untainted by dirty dirty politics)will magically arise from the ashes like the Phoenix.
Despair not, it’s still silly season.
If ever there were a RINO it’s this guy, right? So, to his supporters on Ricochet, I have to ask, would you still support him if he changed his registration to Democrat and ran for that party’s nomination, with all the same bluster and policy proposals he currently spouts?