Where I was right and wrong about Trump

Hi. I’m Lone Candle.

Before Trump entered office, I made two videos that both involved speculations, predictions, hopes, and fears about what may happen in a Trump presidency. Now, I want to see how wrong and right I was.

The costly China trade war

About the trade war with China, I said China was unlikely to give in in any major way. Why? Because China can simply outlast a term-limited U.S. president, because Trump’s plan was to go it alone rather than to create a more powerful world-wide coalition, and because China wants to deter other challenges by acting strong in this trade conflict.

I also said that there’d likely be a weak bullshit deal that’d be trumpeted as a great success and victory.

I was quite right on this one. China did not give in and the phase one deal that came out of the trade war was pretty minimal, although stronger than just a bullshit deal.

The trade war overall was incredibly costly and what we got out of it wasn’t worth it and could have been gotten other ways.

Tariffs are costly to both countries. When the United States puts a tariff on goods coming from China, that hurts Americans. That means those goods are more expensive. We either have to pay more for those goods, or choose to instead buy less quality or more expensive goods that are a worse deal than the pre-tariff Chinese goods.