Damning Report Reveals How Trump’s Tariffs Plan Would Demolish Economy

Donald Trump may have called tariffs the “most beautiful word in the dictionary” on Tuesday, but reporting shows that his economic plans would destroy the economy in nearly every metric. His isolationist policy would skyrocket inflation rates, harm the stock market, and damage America’s global economic standing.

A sweeping report from The Washington Post Wednesday found that independent market experts agree that Trump’s tariff plans would immediately raise costs to U.S. consumers, rather than make his global adversaries pay as he promises. At his appearance at the Economic Club of Chicago on Tuesday, Trump bragged about a potential “2,000 percent tariff,” not entirely out of line of his economic threats he’s levied against Mexico and China recently. In the past, he has threatened tariffs of 10, 20, 100, 200, or even 1000 percent.

His ridiculous, still ill-defined tariff plan would shock the U.S. economy according to the Post’s analysis, causing price increases on items at the grocery store and at the gas pump. Economic think tanks estimate that the tariffs could cost the typical American household somewhere between $2,600 and $7,600 per year, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics and the Yale Budget Lab.

According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the poorest Americans would be hit the hardest, paying an average of 6 percent more under Trump’s plan to implement 20 percent automatic tariffs on all imports. The American economy at-large would also suffer, with that same plan resulting in a $4.3 trillion tax hike over the next 10 years, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

As expected, Trump’s team called the economic findings fake news. “These Wall Street elites would be wise to review the record and acknowledge the shortcomings of their past work if they’d like their new forecasts to be seen as credible,” said Brian Hughes, a Trump campaign senior adviser, to the Post.

Despite what Trump may claim, tariffs are certainly not “the greatest thing ever invented,” and isolating the U.S. economy from the rest of the world will only hurt people at home.

At a Fox News town hall on women’s issues in Georgia taped Tuesday evening, Donald Trump spoke further of the “enemy within” that he wants to use the military against, specifically naming Democratic Representative Adam Schiff as well as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her family. *

“It is the enemy from within. And they’re very dangerous. They’re marxists and they’re communists and they’re fascists and they’re sick.” Trump said to Fox’s Harris Faulker. “I use a guy like Adam Schiff. They made up the Russia Russia Russia hoax.”

Trump went on to claim that enemies like Russia and China could be handled, but the Democrats were a different story. “The more difficult are, you know, the Pelosis, these people, they’re so sick and they’re so evil,” Trump said, adding that he was investigated “more times than Al Capone.”

“They’re the threat to democracy,” Trump said about his Democratic opponents to applause from the supportive audience.

In a weekend interview with Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo, Tru​​mp made an ominous threat to use the military against his critics and intervene in the election, claiming that they are a bigger threat than migrants, a favorite bugbear of his. His supporters struggled to defend his comments, with many Republicans denying them altogether.

Trump has never been a friend of Pelosi, although he did claim in August that one of her daughters said the two would be “perfect together,” which drew a vehement denial from one of said daughters, Christine Pelosi. Trump was also among many of the Republicans who laughed at the violent attack against Nancy’s husband, Paul, in 2022.

The former House speaker has never minced words about Trump, making it clear on January 6, 2021 how much she thought he was a threat to democracy, and highlighting in her book the warnings she received on Trump’s mental health from doctors and mental health professionals. As House speaker, she played a major role in both of Trump’s impeachments in 2019 and 2021. Trump’s targeting of Nancy Pelosi and her family is another way in which he plans to take revenge against his enemies if he wins in November.

* This piece initially misstated Adam Schiff’s title.

It seems that Donald Trump’s campaign isn’t too happy with the glitchy canvassing efforts of Elon Musk’s America PAC.

Musk’s PAC is responsible for the majority of the Trump campaign’s ground game in several swing states. Musk himself has donated at least $75 million to the PAC, spent on advertisements and canvassers to get out the vote.

However, GOP operatives and conservative activists have seen little activity from Musk’s PAC in battleground states, and Trump’s allies are taking their complaints straight to the man in charge, Rolling Stone reported Wednesday.

“We were upfront about our concerns,” said one GOP operative close to Trump. The operative, who spoke anonymously with Rolling Stone, shared a screenshot of a text conversation that showed their reports from swing states had been relayed to the former president.

Several mega-donors and operatives who spoke to Rolling Stone pointed out that the America PAC is still searching for canvassers, according to a posting on its website. “Why isn’t the army already in place?” one donor asked rhetorically.

This complaint is consistent with descriptions of Musk’s operation. In true technocrat fashion, Musk’s canvassing efforts relies on a door-knocking app called Campaign Sidekick, which means that there is no way to actually verify whether volunteers in swing states are doing their jobs.

Sources told Rolling Stone that members of Trump’s camp have been complaining about his reliance on America PAC for weeks. Some in Trump’s inner circle don’t trust the PAC because of who’s actually in charge of it: two veterans of the Ron DeSantis’s failed presidential run, Phil Cox, who led the Never Back Down Super PAC, and Generra Peck, who served as DeSantis’s campaign manager before he dropped out.

“Why in the world would we trust them with anything?” one Trump adviser asked rhetorically.

It seems that Trump has been less than receptive to the warnings from his allies, though. “I can tell you from personal interactions with him that Donald Trump loves what Elon and his operation are doing in the battleground states, and nobody trying to convince him otherwise lately has had any effect,” one Trump political adviser told Rolling Stone. “As you can see, Trump has been saying at rallies how much he loves Elon and the work he’s putting in… Elon is going all in where it truly matters, especially in Pennsylvania, where his efforts are most visible.”

Rather than devote campaign resources to organizing canvassers, Trump has instead focused on motivating his supporters to act as poll watchers, leaving Musk in charge of rounding up hundreds of thousands of votes. As Trump has outsourced his ground game, his efforts have been dwarfed by Kamala Harris’s field campaign.

Democratic Senate candidate Colin Allred had one prevailing message for Texans regarding Senator Ted Cruz: You can’t trust this guy.

Going head-to-head for the first time on Tuesday night, Allred systematically portrayed Cruz as failing to work for the Lone Star State, including torching the Republican for his response to the January 6, 2021, riot in the U.S. Capitol and for fleeing the state during times of hardship.

“After he’d gone around the country lying about the election, after he’d been the architect of the attempted overthrow of that election, when that mob came, Senator Cruz was hiding in a supply closet,” Allred said.

Cruz, in turn, shook his head and laughed weirdly. But the sordid detail first emerged from the 53-year-old’s own book, Justice Corrupted, which detailed Cruz’s escape into a “supply closet with stacked chairs” while Trump supporters descended on the legislature.

“And that’s OK, I don’t want him to get hurt by the mob, I really don’t. This election is his accountability. You cannot just be patriotic when your side wins,” Allred continued. “If for the first time in 250 years, this project of ours—this shared American project—that we did not have a peaceful transfer of power, the folks responsible have to be held accountable.”

Allred also attacked Cruz for his minuscule legislative accomplishments after more than a decade in office, which included joining a conservative effort earlier this year to bomb a bipartisan border deal to help Trump win the election. Cruz also faced the fire for his trip to Cancún in 2021, dipping out on the state—and his dog—during a historic winter storm that paralyzed Texas’s infrastructure. Allred leaned into a Texan saying to sum up Cruz’s efforts during his congressional tenure: “all hat and no cattle.”

“This is a pattern. He talks tough, but he never shows up,” Allred said. “Six more years of this? Come on. He’s had 12 years to do it already.”

Cruz, meanwhile, cast Allred as “radical and extreme,” lamenting that the native Texan would “change” Texas.

“We’re doing an awful lot right in the state of Texas,” Cruz said at the top of the debate. “Colin Allred wants to change that. I want to keep Texas Texas.”

After spending weeks trying to run away from his anti-abortion stance on the campaign trail, Senator Ted Cruz was held accountable by his opponent and the moderators of Tuesday night’s Texas Senate debate.

During the debate against Democratic challenger Representative Colin Allred, Cruz tried to dodge a question on whether he supported the right to an abortion in cases of rape and incest.

In Texas, abortion care is not permitted, except to save the mother’s life. When initially asked if he supported exceptions to the state’s draconian abortion law, Cruz gave a nonanswer, simply saying that states should determine their own laws.

“Well, listen, abortion is an issue that many Texans, many Americans, care deeply about, and it’s an issue that people of good faith can disagree,” Cruz said.

“You did not directly answer the question,” said debate moderator Gromer Jeffers, who again tried to push Cruz to respond to the question. “Why is this an issue you won’t address, about saying whether you support or oppose exceptions for rape and incest?”

“Why do you keep asking me that?” asked an exasperated Cruz.

Cruz is clearly avoiding the question because he knows that abortion bans that don’t permit exceptions for rape and incest aren’t popular with voters, even in the state of Texas and even among Republicans.

He quickly tried to change the subject and accused Allred of allowing minors to get abortions without their parents’ permission. “He has voted in favor of striking down Texas law that gives parents the right to be notified and consent,” said Cruz. “He’s voted in favor of striking down Texas’ law and legalizing abortion up to and including the eighth and ninth month of pregnancy.”

“Senator Cruz just called himself pro-life. You’re not,” responded Allred. “It’s not pro-life to deny women care so long that they can’t have children anymore. It’s not pro-life to force a victim of rape to carry a their rapist baby. It’s not pro-life that our maternal mortality has skyrocketed up by 56 percent.

“When Ted Cruz says he’s pro-life, he doesn’t mean yours.”