Wikimedia Commons.
Trump is busy threatening German automakers, because they aren’t completely focused on uStates. He seems to think that all automakers who want to sell their cars in the States, must manufacture their cars in the States, too. Oh gods, he’s such a fucking idiot. Anyroad, he’s threatening to tack on a 35% border tax on all vehicles imported to uStates.
“If you want to build cars in the world, then I wish you all the best. You can build cars for the United States, but for every car that comes to the USA, you will pay 35 percent tax,” Trump said in remarks translated into German.
Trump goes on and on, threatens more, remembers to threaten Japan’s Toyota, too. Trump doesn’t have the slightest idea of what he’s doing, so he ends up at the default: melting down and having a tantrum. Here’s a great example of just how very bad of a businessman Trump is:
Trump called Germany a great car producer, saying Mercedes-Benz cars were a frequent sight in New York, but claimed there was not enough reciprocity. Germans were not buying Chevrolets at the same rate, he said, calling the business relationship an unfair one-way street.
Let that one soak in a while. The sheer idiocy is stunning.
Via Reuters.
Perhaps if American car-makers made cars that were even half as good as German cars they might sell more of them overseas. As it is even Americans don’t want to drive American cars these days -- because they’re horrible, inefficient, overpriced and far too big.
GM has owned Adam Opel AG since 1929 and Opel makes the European market equivalents of Chevy cars. I rest my case.
Ice Swimmer:
Yes, that’s mentioned in the article:
It would be right nice if our soon to be prez displayed even the tiniest understanding of how these things work.
Trump sure likes to use the word ‘unfair’ a lot.
If someone said that while a bully was hitting him, the bully would just laugh and hit him harder.
It’s like DT thinks that civilization still exists under some circumstances.
Why should we buy shitty cars?
But maybe Trump should remember that trade wars go both ways. I doubt his big business buddies would be happy about that…
multitool:
No, that’s not what he thinks at all. He simply thinks that anything that is not going the way he wants it to is wrong, unfair, or sad. He’s a fucking wannabe tyrant.
Think about what he said. Why in the fuckety fuck would anyone think that car sales should be based on equal numbers? Car sales depend on getting the best possible vehicle you can afford. Now, if I could afford any car I wanted, and was given a choice between a Mercedes and a Chevy, guess what? Yeah, going with the Merc.
There is a lot of KIA and Hyundai cars in Germany. Merkel should surely insist that Koreans buy more BMWs. That would be fair.
I drove an All American piece of shit for two weeks before I traded it for a similarly beat-up Toyota back when I was still driving.
I put a good 20k km on that Toyota and it never once complained. The Ford, in comparison, broke down a week after its first inspection.
I think Trump wants to run the presidency like his business, thinking he can make the rules as he likes them.
That might work with the GOP, but the world won’t roll over
Giliell:
It may not even work on the GOP if their pockets end up in peril. It’s very disturbing, to say the least, that Trump thinks he can just issue edicts and everyone has to fall in line. It ain’t gonna be pretty when he finally figures out that it doesn’t work that way.
@Caine
“It may not even work on the GOP if their pockets end up in peril.”
Yeah, they have to be having a major WTF moment after his most recent comments about his “soon to be finished” healthcare “plan”. (You know it is bad when you need more than one set of scare quotes in a sentence.)
The thing is, he just can’t do that. The president cannot just unilaterally decide to impose tariffs or taxes. Congress is the one to do that. I know that we have republicans in charge of Congress, but they are not going to shoot US businesses in the foot by imposing harsh import fees because they know that the foreign countries would respond with their own tariffs.
Giliell
I’m rather inclined to the view that Trump _really_ doesn’t understand democracy (along with economics, basic humanity and a few other essentials). His behaviour might look like toddler or teenage tantrums. However, I think a lot of it is frustration.
He’s behaving as though he was elected king. Once you see it through that lens, all the nepotism, favouritism and kleptocratic stuff falls neatly into place. He’s entitled to do as he likes when he likes with whom he likes and he’s utterly, genuinely, mystified as to why the rest of the world, or at least the USA, doesn’t get it.
USAmerican cars are expensive to maintain over here (at least, here, not sure about elsewhere in Europe). Fuel efficiency and parts being the two main financial annoyances, but basic durability, esp. for any in-country travel outside of cities (the capital), is extremely important -- Japanese and Korean cars still have a ways to go in this respect, though they’re making in-roads for city driving.
(Chrysler vans are becoming more ubiquitous, that’s also something… Oh wait, haha! But that’s the one thing that’s difficult to find among European auto manufacturers, a decently-sized 7-seat van that also looks half-way pleasant to look at. And has enough trunk-space for carting apples and potatoes back from the country.)
mostlymarvelous:
No he isn’t. Trump is entitlement poisoned, to be sure, but he’s not mystified in the least. Yes, he wants to be an emperor, and the problem lies in his entitlement -- right now, he thinks once he’s in office, he’ll be able to convert to king/emperor whatever.
I won’t dig up the reference again, but last year there was an opinion(?) column in the INYT (ex-IHT) postulating teh trum-prat’s entire worldview is that of a what is known as a “rent-seeker“:
At the risk of confirmation bias, that seems to describe teh trum-prat and his proposed cabinet, &tc, almost perfectly, as well as some of what many of us are probably concerned will be the result.
Yeah, but that’s why I was referring to his previous businesses: He got away with almost everything. He could bully people into submission. He got away with not paying people and hoping for them to become too poor to sue. He got away with becoming president despite winning a lot less votes than Clinton.
Now imagine him trying to tell Merkel what to do on Twitter. Or China. Let’s not even mention Russia, who’d probably send something back reading “Dear Donald. Thank you very much for your kind suggestions. Unfortunately we have to decline. See you later, Vladi.
P.S. Remember the good times we had at the MOscow Hotel?”
Amusingly, General Motors looks to sell loss-making Vauxhall and Opel (this is currently-breaking news, so there is not much detail at the present time).