Dr. Rasmus identifies weakening retail sales and business inventories as sources of US GDP sharply slowing later this year. Trump’s tariffs as only opening skirmish in US trade war—with China not the rest of the world. Half of US $810 billion trade deficit in goods is with China. Watch next week Trump actions targeting China trade. Why China will not respond cooperatively. Rasmus puts Trump’s ‘Déjà vu’ trade war in historical perspective, showing how US corporations and politicians have always periodically attacked their foreign capitalist competitors to improve US share of world trade profits, by manipulating US currency and forcing trade treaties. Nixon in 1971-73 (Smithsonian Agreement) and Reagan in 1985-86 (Plaza and Louvre Accords), targeting Europe and Japan, respectively. Trump will target China. The show also addresses the escalating US total debt, from $50 trillion in i2007 to $70 trillion today and what it means, the 10 year anniversary of the Bear-Stearns Investment bank crash of March 2008, the accelerating banking deregulation by Congress underway, and the appointment of economic lightweight Larry Kudlow to Trump’s Economic Council and his support for absurd ‘supply side’ economic ideology.
