We have the lowest unemployment ever! But we need more jobs!

Something like that.

or how they work.

are a profit center as well

his family and his cronies, like Icahn, benefit.

before long, while watching the rest of the world pass us by.

The best explanation I've heard of what he's "thinking" here is that every deal has a winner and a loser. If the other guy is getting something out of the deal, that must mean you're losing and need to blow up the deal. Everything is zero-sum for him, it's not possible for something to benefit everybody.

Has anybody tried to explain to him exactly how these things work and how tariffs affect the economy? Then again, I suppose all his advisers are morons as well.

That $800 billion goes from us to China. He doesn’t understand that we get goods in return. He doesn’t know what he’s doing or how international trade works.

Like someone said above, he's incapable of comprehending trade agreements where both sides benefit...he feels that if the trading partner gets anything at all out of the deal, then his side must be getting ripped off (b/c that's how he's always done business...making sure to rip off the other guy wherever possible). The world (in his eyes) is composed of Winners and Losers; there is no win/win scenario that can exist with that frame of mind.

If he gets any concession at all from a foreign country, he has "won", because someone will praise him. It doesn't matter if Americans and the American economy get damaged in the process, because they're not him, or his personal property.

This is why the Canadian idea of implementing tariffs on the Trump Org is a good idea. it's the only thing that might make him listen.

Think of him as a World War One general sending troops forward to get killed. The only way he'll stop is if he actually has to lead the charge in person.