No. of Recommendations: 3
B-b-b-but...Trump wants to put higher tariffs on imported goods, which will create...(drum roll)...higher prices! And that will increase the demand for non-imported goods, which if I'm remembering my Econ 101 well, will create...(drum roll)...higher prices!
What am I missing?
That voters don't care to get into the weeds about economic policy. Inflation happened on Biden's watch (like every other incumbent party), therefore we need to throw him out. Because he did a bad job. Almost no voters have any real economic background - they're going by heuristics. Inflation happened when Democrats were in charge, therefore we should let the Republicans have control of the economy...because they didn't cause the inflation.
Also - I don't think this was a message that Harris focused on. They attacked Trump on abortion, character and fitness, and "threat to democracy." They never really attacked his tariff policy very much. Sure, sometimes - but it wasn't the thrust of their argument, that Trump would make inflation bad again.
And finally, you end up with the "take Trump seriously but not literally" problem. No one really thinks that Trump is going to impose an across the board 60% tariff on everything from China. He's not using that number as a serious policy outline, but as a way of signalling his general position: "I want to start using protectionist muscle against China and I'm dead serious about it." Everyone knows that 60% is just a number he made up without a lot of thought, and so it's highly unlikely that's where he'd land if he actually won. Which makes it almost impossible to pick apart his "proposal" without seeming like a someone who isn't smart enough to understand the point.
