With This Basic Error, Trump Is Doing His Best To Hide His 'Genius'

Oh dear, Donald Trump really doesn't get this economics thing at all. We read today that he has now declared he will use NAFTA negotiations to make Mexico pay for the wall. Alas, a 'stable genius' like this really shouldn't be making so many category errors.

Trump has spent the best part of a year explaining to Americans how, under current NAFTA rules, Mexicans export far too many goods and services to America, and that that is hurting the domestic economy.

Yet now through NAFTA renegotiations he's "going to take a small percentage of that money and it’s going towards the wall” - which infers that Americans will receive either US dollars or Mexican pesos as payment for the wall.

At which point, one has to ask: what the heck is Trump on about? If he's on about payment in dollars, then Mexicans first must acquire the dollars to pay the wall bill – and to do this, Mexicans must sell goods and services to Americans. It is only through selling more goods and services to Americans that Mexico will get more dollars to pay for the wall. But this contradicts Trump's rhetoric about dissuading more Mexican exports to America.

And if Trump means payment in Mexican pesos, then his reasoning is equally flawed, because he unwittingly commends the very thing he has spent the last year rejecting - that is, increased sales of goods and services from Mexico to America. 

The upshot is, the only way that Mexicans can fulfil Trump's wish is if they export more real goods and services to America - something Trump mistakenly presumes is a benefit to Mexicans at a cost to Americans. Trump needs to make up his mind whether he wants to slow down the Mexican imports he thinks harm his domestic economy or whether he wants to speed up the Mexican imports to pay for the wall.

Lastly, there is an outside chance that a 'stable genius' like Trump thinks (although I doubt it) Mexico will pay for the wall through US import tariffs. Yet as anyone with even a sketchy understanding of economics will know, tariffs do not just hurt foreign exporters, they hurt the domestic economy too.

If Trump raises import tariffs he will raise the prices of imports from Mexico too, meaning Americans will buy fewer of those goods or pay higher dollar prices for the goods they keep on buying. Either way, Americans are paying for the wall.

And where Mexicans are hurt by higher tariffs, they will have fewer dollars from their exports to America, which means they will have less to spend on American goods, which will do the other thing Trump claims to hate - hurt American jobs. Must do better, Donald!