Trump Asserts He Can Force U.S. Companies to Leave China

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17. Does Trump have a reelection strategy that we're not seeing?

His behavior is so erratic lately that it’s hard to see any sort of strategy. Surely some of his advisers have had the courage to tell him his tariffs are likely to cause a recession and jeopardize his reelection. But instead of trying his usual tactic of giving in to China and declaring it the greatest deal any human being has ever made in all of history, he has amped up the rhetoric and added tariffs. And then, as a slap in the face both to China and US businesses, he orders US companies to get out of China and says he has all the power to do so under the Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977. I would hope that even Trump’s toadies in the Senate would vote against that use because the only emergency is one Trump could fix by seriously negotiating with China instead of acting like the ignorant bully he is.

But if the Senate does nothing and Trump is allowed to invoke the Emergency Powers Act, it will send the US economy into a depression, not just mild recession. Is that Trump’s goal? Trump seems to like taking outrageous ideas for a test run to see how much pushback he gets. If very little, he moves forward, as he did with the government shutdown.

Is Trump doing a test run of his ability to invoke the Emergency Powers Act to see what kind of pushback he gets from Congress? If he gets none from the Republicans in the Senate, he will go forward and we will see the economy crash. Will Trump then try to use the Emergency Powers Act either to postpone the 2020 election or to overturn the results? Trump is so evil and manipulative that I can believe anything of him.