Top Trump Official So Freaked Out by Tariffs, He Wants to Quit

https://newrepublic.com/post/193634/donald-trump-treasury-scott-bessent-tariffs-quit

34 comments

  2. >Trump’s tariff policy represents a sort of defeat for Bessent, a former hedge fund manager who entered office under the delusion that he might actually succeed in stopping Trump

    They always believe they’ll be the exception, the special one, unique from all those who came before and warned them not to do it.

  3. > under the delusion that he might actually succeed in stopping Trump

    I imagine “stopping” should be replaced with “controlling.” These people are there because they wanted on on the scam and had planned to be the last person in Donny’s ear.

  4. Now I understand why they hand out so much Xanax at the WH

  5. If you watched any of the interviews he did you can tell he didn’t agree with any of this and is hoping Trump cancels all the tariffs he just placed.

  6. “Stop right where you are! You know the score, pal. You’re not GOP, you’re little people.”

  7. I wish, for once, a cabinet member would actually consider invoking 25A rather than quitting. If they had done that after J6, we wouldn’t be in this mess, but instead the cabinet resigned because they’re all cowards who can’t admit when they’re wrong.

  8. If he doesn’t enthusiastically support Trump, he won’t have to quit; he’ll be fired.

    You know what would be great? It would be great if we had a body of men in the government that Trump couldn’t fire, and who could pass laws to prevent him from ruining the country.

    But I guess that’s just a pipe dream.

  9. “Do or Do Not, there is no Want”, Short green guy in a swamp.

  10. I saw an interview with him were he didn’t seem to know anything about the tariffs and said he didn’t know anything about the negotiations with foreign countries either. I’m not surprised he is thinking about quitting he seems to have no say in what is going on and doesn’t even seem to be kept in the loop with what is going to happen. This seems to be all Navarro and his clique.

  11. Let’s talk about the tariffs and the effects it has on the manufacturers of this country.

    Assume for a minute that you wanted to bring back some manufacturing to the USA, which of course is a huge assumption compared to manufacturing outside the country like we do as a company.

    Which I will get to in just a moment.
    This week alone the stock market lost over US$9 trillion which means every single manufacturer that has a US corporation is part of that loss. Which goes to show you that Trump‘s logic is about as efficient as his spray tan.

    If these companies even had a thought of coming back to the United States, all of their cash has now evaporated because of the loss in the stock market so who’s going to finance these new manufacturing plants that Trump keeps talking about, that are going to come back here make the economy great?

    Now goods have gone up in price in some cases doubled already this week which means the consumers are going to be buying less. Companies are going to begin layoffs, because they’ve lost a huge portion of their cash reserves. Their businesses are going to be diminished some because of the lower purchasing rate and the higher pricing.

    Bringing manufacturing back to the United States at this point with this approach has been almost completely eliminated.

    All you have to do is go back and look at what happened during the depression when they tried to institute tariffs causing the depression to take even a further nose dive and adding years into the depressive point. It’s such a joke that they used it in the movie Ferris Bueller‘s Day off where the teacher was talking about how bad tariffs are and how they caused the depression to go down, which goes to show you that if they use it as a punchline, then it obviously cannot work.

    With our business, we were building some manufacturing plants in the United States and now have had to put it on hold because of the tariffs. As an example, each of our production lines has a manufacturing cost of a little under US$5 million, we did try to price it in the United States but we found quotes anywhere from $12-$16 million for the same exact production line that we are having made in China. So we couldn’t make the equipment in the United States, but we were going to import it and set up manufacturing plants.

    One of them was in Arkansas where the state is somewhat depressed. Now we have put that project on hold with approximately 1800 people we were going to hire.

    The reason for that is not just the tariffs, from the equipment if you think about it a piece of equipment that cost me $5 million is now going to cost me about $9 million. Each production line generates about US$35 million of revenue so it’s not just a tariff in my situation it’s the fact that for $9 million I can have practically two production lines generating $70 million of income compared to the same $9 million generating $35 million worth of income, with a much lower profit margin because of the labor cost in the United States along with all the taxes and liability issues that you carry because of the litigious nature of the United States operating.

    So tariffs do not work, they hurt the economy. The only thing that they do on the surface is generate more tax dollars for the US government, but they diminish and wipe out the middle and lower class.

    Do you want to bring manufacturing back to the United States?

    You’ve got to do something about all of the litigious actions, you have to lower healthcare cost, lower pharmaceutical cost, have to educate more so that children can grow up and learn trades.

    You have to find ways to lower the cost of living and once you start doing that then laboring jobs will become available again.

    The next problem is the taxation situation is off-balance. We have structured our tax code so that the wealthy and the publicly traded companies that offer stock options instead of salaries, which is taxable make it almost impossible to collect tax.

    Take Musk for an example from Tesla.

    They talk about his $300 billion worth but it’s all in stock and that’s unrealized gains paying no taxes. What he does is he goes to the bank and he borrows money against that stock portfolio, borrowed money is non-taxable income and then he uses that money to live and buy things like he bought Twitter for $44 billion with borrowed money, no taxes paid at all.

    And then what he does from there to pay off those loans is he borrows against other portfolios and he just keeps borrowing deferring the taxes.

    $300 billion and no taxes paid whereas the employees that work for all those companies have taxes taken out of each paycheck.

    Just look salaries up of the top executives around the country and you look at their income, you’ll see that their salaries are generally between one hundred and two hundred thousand US dollars but they earned anywhere from ten to a hundred million dollars a year all in stock options and then they keep those options in stock and then borrow against them so their tax base is almost nothing.

    you want to fix the economy. You have to find a way to tax the rich, you’re not going to make them poor, you’re just going to make them help to strengthen the economy.

    I almost forgot, tariffs funds go directly to the administration for spending (trump and his team), whereas taxes go through congress for spending.

  12. They didn’t mind the fascism, but he went after the money and that was a bridge too far.

    Not exactly a moral stand there.

  13. Imagine building a solid reputation over a 40 year career on Wall Street and then lighting it on fire and flushing it down the toilet for a moronic loser like Donald Trump.

  16. Do Americans just believe everything they read? I see so many of yall hooting and cheering here. This guy literally just spent over an hour with Tucker Carlson explaining why Tariffs are absolutely essential. Don’t believe me? Go look it up on YouTube.

  17. he doesn’t want to quit due to tariff, he is worried about his credibility and wants to get into the feds instead

  18. The fact is: There are no adults in the room in this administration…. No one is able to reel in the orange C.R.A.P. (Convicted Rapist And Pedophile)

  19. Is that the same moron who warned other countries to not retaliate?

  20. These oh I don’t like Trump now even though I super supported him and got him elected stories are so 2016. Stay or go, I don’t care. You own this mess.

  21. Fuck that. No elective/voluntary terminations.

    Scott Bessent needs to carry this disgusting abomination to full term and live with the shame of whoring himself out to the biggest scum on the planet.

  23. Maybe I’m giving them too much credit, but I can’t imagine most die-hard Republicans voted for Trump because they wanted to destroy other people’s — and their own — lives.

  25. Bessent drips arrogance so it’s no wonder he thought he could tame the wild orange animal. 

    Not sure if anyone knew this as well but dude is almost a billionaire himself and him in his wife own a gigantic pink mansion. 

  27. Do it. You have the right to be happy. No matter what, the redditers administrator and mods can prevent you from quitting, and we know Reddit CEO might be working with the president right now.

    https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-messaged-reddit-ceo-over-content

    According to a new report in The Verge, Musk privately contacted Reddit CEO Steve Huffman regarding content on the social sharing platform.

    Shortly after the correspondence between Musk and Huffman, a thread about DOGE employees was deleted.

  28. Imagine being that rich, but also being that stupid to believe you’ll be the exception with Trump despite scores of people who thought the same thing and were left in the scrap heap. Yet another example of wealth not being a sign of intelligence.

  29. Like with most politicians, grow some balls and actually do something instead of bailing!

  30. Look Trump has been a narcist for 70 years. Its too late for therapy.

  31. FUCK THIS GUY! He’s spent the last 50 days espousing the lies. At many points doubling down on obvious misinformation. I genuinely hope that every Trump cabinet member’s career, post admin, is a terrific failure. 

  32. Meanwhile Bessent sat w Maria Bartaromo the other day and explained exactly how the tariffs will work out and fully in support. This reporter has bad info

  33. I don’t believe them they are in on the destruction for Russian benefit they are traitors

  34. Just watched this joker on Meet The Press trying to spin Trump’s disaster. The lies just roll off his tongue.

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