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How does the consumer avoid paying? If the monitor costs $500 and you slap a $300 tariff on it, they will raise the price to $800, or to whatever preserves their profit. They aren’t going to just eat the tariff and export at a loss. ”China will pay” is just Trump’s gross ignorance of how this works. Or another lie to sell to his marks (or a combination of the two)

Most voters busy with their lives and jobs and children and paying bills are only just now tuning in for the first time. They hear his lies for the very first time and have no baseline understanding against which to evaluate their truth. Those same not tuned in voters also have selective memories about the economy being good and inflation not being an issue during the Trump years. They don’t understand that the challenges we’ve faced during Biden’s term were a result of poor decisions during Trumps. They’ve also memory-holed the daily chaos, and the lies about Covid, the way he abandoned allies and encouraged racial hatred and is basically only their to enrich himself and his family. It’s easy to be fooled when you’re paying attention, and even easier when you’re not. That’s how you account for his strength in the polls.

Then that would be no different than with any legal system. And if you told me that the reason that laws exist against murder is due to a secret cabal desiring power and control, rather than the observable harm that murder causes, I would think that's absurd. The reality is that systems of social control exist in day-to-day life, whether they come from a "religion" or from secular laws and institutions, and I see no practical difference beyond what the laws and rules themselves might be. (I would agree that a law requiring people to attend Catholic mass would be different than a law against murder).