Wall Street Journal pummels Trump for 'punishing America first' with botched tariff war with China

TOM BOGGIONI
07 APR 2018 AT 10:20 ET

The conservative Wall Street Journal lashed out at President Donald Trump on Saturday morning with a blistering editorial, hammering the President for plunging the U.S. into a trade war with China which is hurting American farmers and businessmen.

Under a very pointed headline reading, “Punishing America First,” the editorial board at the Rupert Murdoch-owned WSJ, was unsparing in it’s criticism of Trump’s tariff moves that have plunged the markets into chaos, while the president has offered the cold comfort that Americans will have to suffer a bit as he figures it out.

“Donald Trump and his advisers spent much of Friday telling everyone that the U.S. is not in a trade war with China, but investors weren’t buying it,” The editors wrote. “Equity markets took a major header, falling by more than 2% across the board. Maybe investors are starting to look at the damage Mr. Trump may do to the Farm Belt states and to the GOP’s chances of holding Congress.”

“We’ve been warning since Mr. Trump first emerged as a candidate that his nationalist economics should be taken seriously,” the piece continued. “This is one policy he seems truly to believe in, he has empowered protectionist advisers, and previous Congresses have given a President wide latitude to act unilaterally. Trade was always the biggest economic risk of the Trump Presidency, and now we’re living through his punch-first policy as he tries to stare down Xi Jinping.”

“Mr. Trump doesn’t even seem to mind if the tariffs do some economic damage while he’s supposedly fixing the U.S. trade deficit. ‘I’m not saying there won’t be a little pain, but the market has gone up 40%, 42%, so we might lose a little bit of it. But we’re going to have a much stronger country when we’re finished,’ the President told a New York radio show on Friday,” the opinion piece added before following with a sarcastic, “Nice to know it will all turn out for the best.”

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https://www.rawstory.com/2018/04/wall-street-journal-pummels-trump-punishing-america-first-botched-tariff-war-china/