"These countries around the world have had 70 years to do the right thing by the American people and they have chosen not to. They have ripped off American workers. They have taken our jobs overseas. The president is putting an end to that yesterday." - Karoline Leavitt. https://trt.global/world/article/a91f07174f64
This got me because I will turn 70 this year, so the math was pretty simple. 70 years ago is 1955, and not sure what countries she is talking about - most countries were still recovering from WWII. China, Japan and Germany were pretty messed up and England and France were just getting their act together. If anything they were all still buying stuff from the US, and but we were pretty happy just building stuff for the growing baby-boom generation.
What she might have said was about 50 years ago, when Nixon opened up relationships with China - but we still were not doing much about trade then.
She could have said it was around 40 years ago when Reagan and the Republicans started changing the tax laws to benefit corporations, and companies started to move production overseas to increase profits. Had to keep those new 401K plans growing somehow....
She could have said 30 years ago, when the Democrats wanted to use targeted tariffs against China and were shot down by the Republicans.
I am also trying to find where countries like Vietnam ripped off American workers when the companies exporting from there are American companies who left China in the last 20 years. We thought then that was a good thing. Least we could do for a country we bombed that is still digging up explosives today.
The reason the stock market is down is that it is not China, or other countries that are necessarily the problem, when Apple, Tesla and GM all built factories over there to take advantage of the Chinese market and of course pass some savings on to US customers, but also the fact that if these sales drop, then the profit that would have come back to America is also cut off…..
Anyway, this just goes to prove that Karoline does not have a good grasp of math…
"Blimey! This redistribution of wealth Is trickier than I thought!" Dennis Moore - Monty Python
originally posted to my Facebook account 4/5/2025