r/WallStreetbetsELITE • u/errantv • 3d ago
Discussion Just figured out where these fake tariff rates come from. They didn't actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did. Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country's exports to us.
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u/watch-nerd 3d ago
So it's not reciprocal at all.
It's higher than actual tariffs.
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u/Downtown-Midnight320 3d ago
Yes... they think we should pay more for goods from Indonesia, because Indonesia doesn't spend as much buying our goods..... it's really fucking stupid
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u/watch-nerd 3d ago
They're confusing trade deficits with tariffs.
And you can't really be the world reserve currency without trade deficits.
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u/No-Kings 3d ago
Ding ding ding.
The whole reason we run a deficit is because we are the world’s reserve currency. Without that, loans dry up and austerity or printing the trillion dollar coin plan.
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u/watch-nerd 3d ago
I'm sure Bessent knows this very well. He's one of the few non-idiots in the crew.
So I don't know how he squares that circle given he wants Treasury rates to come down to 3%.
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u/Technical_Scallion_2 3d ago
He likes being in power.
He doesn’t want to get thrown out a window when the purges start.
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u/No-Kings 3d ago
They are going up 2 elon zeig heigh points.
Like I don’t see any other plan.
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u/LAPL620 2d ago
And over in the conservative sub no one seems to understand this part. They think we need to balance the deficit like we should balance the budget. It’s painful to read.
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u/Additional_City6635 2d ago
i try really hard to be generous to peoples opinions and see things from their perspective. But it really seems like every conservative is either a selfish rich asshole or a complete moron
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u/Downtown-Midnight320 2d ago
They go on and on for years ranting about how the concept of EQUITY is bad and then base their whole international trade agenda around it 😂
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u/abnormica 3d ago
I'm convinced Trump understands 'trade' as in "trading Pokemon cards" or "trading comic books" and this confirms it. If the numbers aren't equal, it's "bad trade".
Same as if I give you a Batman #1 and you give me a recent Archie comic. Not equal - bad trade, we've been taken advantage of!
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u/photozine 2d ago
I think y'all are confusing that these people actually know what they're doing...
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u/reyntime 3d ago
I mean Australia has a free trade agreement with the US, we don't charge tariffs, yet apparently the tariffs are "reciprocal". Trump is an absolute moron.
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u/cleepboywonder 2d ago
Its all marketing. Presentation. If he just lies and calls it recriprocol he can get his fucking moron base to agree with him and then change the entire definition to suit his goal.
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u/TheFellhanded 2d ago
He thinks the GST is a tariff because it is a tax on all goods within our country
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u/Got2Bfree 2d ago
Yes, also Trump doesn't understand (or ignores) that VAT is not a tariff because it is applied to all products even domestically produced ones.
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u/ovirto 2d ago
It was never reciprocal. I wish the media would stop using that term. It's punitive -- pure and simple (like the ass hat formula they used).
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u/JockCartier 3d ago
Not surprised.
These guys do not comprehend how even basic things scale. You can wage a trade war on one country and perhaps “win” insofar are inflicting more pain than you receive. But the more you add, the worse you fare, so of course they take on the whole world. They seem to be utterly oblivious to that the rest of the world trades amongst themselves
This is one of the biggest economic catastrophes ever seen… and completely self inflicted
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u/saysjuan 3d ago
The whole world except for Russia. The one country not on the list.
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u/GustavoSanabio 3d ago
Still sanctioned. Wouldn’t make sense to tarriff a country that can’t sell to you
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u/saysjuan 3d ago
The Heard and McDonald Islands near Antartica were on the list with a 10% tariff. The islands are uninhabited by humans yet they also made the list.
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u/ConiferousTurtle 2d ago
Those penguins are crafty. One of these days they’ll figure out how to export their surplus of fish…
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u/Super-Base- 3d ago
Trump has already threatened 25% secondary tariffs on Russian oil.
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u/dogsledonice 2d ago
"threatened"
He's also threatened to sue anybody of note who's ever said stuff against him.
Has he ever actually gone to court to follow up?
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u/Treskelion2021 3d ago
This quote comes to mind - “ From a professional negotiation point of view, Trump isn’t even bringing checkers to a chess match. He’s bringing a quarter that he insists on flipping for heads or tails, while everybody else is studying the chess board to decide whether it’s better to open with Najdorf or Grünfeld.”
So much for “Art of the Deal”
Source - https://medium.com/@davidhonig_67081/distributive-bargaining-in-an-integrative-world-1593a7c6ffe2
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u/nafo_sirko 3d ago
But he also has ALL the cards at a chess game. Poker deck, pokemon cards, magic the gathering, victim card.
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u/Irish_Goodbye4 3d ago
This is NOT a tariff rate !! They took a country’s trade deficit divided by US imports. Many countries have zero tariffs on America yet are accused of a high tariff rate simply for having a trade surplus. This is so laughably dumb and stupid.
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u/Merochmer 3d ago
And the US has a huge service sector surplus against most countries.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, AWS, Azure, Salesforce.
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u/Bloodcloud079 2d ago
My understanding is they also slapped the 10% on countries where the US has a trade surplus…
So it really is just suuuuuuppper dumb.
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u/somethingsomethingbe 3d ago
These idiots want the U.S. to somehow be funded by tariffs which puts a lot of power into foreign countries if they decide to cut the flow of goods.
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u/hellothereshinycoin 2d ago
One part that seems to be overlooked here is how they are stating how much revenue these tariffs will generate.
Over a 10 year period.
Tariffs, issued under the authority of a lie about a "national emergency", are being projected out to 10 years' worth of revenue.
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u/eepos96 3d ago
This is one of the biggest economic catastrophes ever seen… and completely self inflicted
This is the most baffeling part
While true that basic consumer feels terrible about ther buying power, economy as a whole had full employment and one of the best economies in the world.
And now they will have a recession, not because of over heated market but because sheer lack of...nope words fail me.
Lunacy.
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u/Zhirrzh 3d ago
Truly this is the economic equivalent of Trump musing about injecting bleach to kill COVID, only instead of having minders to hold him back from this he got egged on.
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u/CanaryPutrid1334 3d ago
What a fucking moron. The world simultaneously laughs at and hates us. And we deserve it.
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u/jazznessa 3d ago
So go out and protest! You guys are the boss of this douche, protest protest protest
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u/ollieonreddit21 3d ago
👆this! I wonder why we don’t see mass protests in the USA
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u/LocalTrainsGirl 3d ago
They do protest, but Americans have been taught to protest politely so as to cause as little disruption as possible. It's why they just stand by on sidewalks with signs instead of closing entire towns and cities down.
I long for the days Americans finally turn cars upside down and set fire to buildings like the French do.
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u/JonInOsaka 3d ago
Honestly I think its because a lot of people are scared Trump will declare martial law and order the police and national guard to round them up and disappear them to El Salvador.
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u/Sea-Truck85 2d ago
I don’t think that’s it. Look at how people here talk about protests that are actually disruptive, disdain at best and violence leading to people plowing their cars into protesters at most. A protest shuts down a road and the comments are mostly about how angry people would be if they were late to work. There’s next to zero class solidarity in this country. People don’t need to be afraid of an authoritarian crack down not to do anything because they already hate the people who speak out. We aren’t being forced or manipulated, we’re begging, on hands and knees to be stomped to death by people with money. We love it because we are a deeply demented people, we are sick, rationality has nothing to do with it.
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u/Prestigious_Tree4223 3d ago
Because the media doesn't report on them. There are protests happening daily, across the country. Check out r/50501 to see some of them.
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u/Mother_Class_529 3d ago
The numbers he was talking about, a blind man can tell you they are bullshit percentages.
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u/MosquitoValentine_ 3d ago
During his campaign Trump said the current rate of inflation was well over 20% when in fact it was below 3%. He also added a few zeros to his crowd sizes.
The numbers are made up and screwed to push whatever agenda he wants. Even when real experts and objective data proves him wrong, he still denies it.
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u/warpedbytherain 3d ago
No matter how many times they were told that the "only 6% of federal workers go into the office" was not accurate nor from official data, they repeated it and even put it in an executive order, iirc.
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u/Ok-Youth-732 3d ago
Just got in huge fight with partner who says let him see what he does in one year and then comment. And then proceeded to say that im insane if i think i understand the economy and world order better than trump and elon. Am i insane?
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u/SadCommercial3517 3d ago
insane for your choices in partner maybe.
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u/caishaurianne 3d ago
Yeah, really questioning u/Ok-Youth-732’s judgement.
Not on the tariff part, though.
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u/VeterinarianJaded462 3d ago
You should definitely check back in a year from now to dunk on them from a bread line.
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u/warpedbytherain 3d ago
Say "okay, I'll shut up if you read 10 random articles about this issue from global economists"
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u/LowraAwry 3d ago
"They're global economists ergo they're globalists, our sworn enemies, they want the american dimise!" will be their reply, your mistake is expecting intelligence from certain people that are too far gone.
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u/ljout 3d ago
Your partner is an idiot for supporting Trump after J6. Full stop.
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u/Lloyd--Christmas 2d ago
You can still point to policies that are good even if you hate the guy, but this isn’t that. Tariffs are a terrible policy and the way he’s going about it, blanket tariffs, is an even dumber policy. When the broken clock is right I figure he listened to experts on the subject. But with this all the experts are saying it is detrimental. When experts are saying it’s detrimental you need to be in the cult to think Trump and Elon are right. This woman’s boyfriend is in the cult.
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u/ljout 2d ago
I can't point to hardly any good POLICIES from the Trump administration.
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u/Merochmer 3d ago
Elon and Trump understands this is insane on an economic level but they have other motives. It unravels global trade and goes hand in hand with breaking the rule based world order.
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u/heckinCYN 3d ago
It gets worse. Ask ChatGPT how to calculate the numbers in the first column. That's where they got the idea from.
https://chatgpt.com/share/67edb4b0-7fa4-800c-aa08-e6643d6149b4
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u/FriendToPredators 3d ago
The complete numbskullery of expecting every smaller counrty/smaller economy to buy as much from the US as the consumer crazy US buys from them is still incomprehensible.
Why? Why do the Rs get any credit for being better for business? No economic data supports that. Reagan bought his economic boost by quadrupling the debt and paying public funds into a massive military industrial complex. No way that counts.
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u/Tomek_xitrl 3d ago
He put tariffs on countries that do buy more from the USA too so it's even more nonsensical.
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u/symplton 3d ago
Forget checkers, forget chess, this is the tictactoe level.
Welcome to it.
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u/Muted-Collection-256 3d ago
The stock market crash comes first. We have a mentally insane man running America and hes doing mentally insane acts. A depression will come. Japan and South Korea partner with China to go after the US. The EU is considering a ban on all products from US.
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u/Electrical_Sun_7116 3d ago
Every day it’s like the fireworks version of stupidity- so bright and loud and huge you really just have to stand back and watch in awe of how profoundly fucking stupid and arrogant they truly are. They really believe they understand this shit! The fucking audacity goes beyond even Dunning-Kruger to personify abject absurdity. These people are weapons-grade stupid and each moment is just another fucktangular gangbang of profound idiocy.
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u/RealAmbassador4081 3d ago
Don't forget about the Tax on that Tax. Like something from Japan that was $100 plus say 10% tax. = $110. Now it's $125 plus 10% = 137.50 so not only an extra $25 it's an extra $2.50 in Tax.
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u/Scenic719 3d ago
Poor Lesotho is at 99% supposedly. Get ready for your diamonds and knit suits to be 50% more expensive.
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u/DerHunMar 3d ago
I was wondering where these came from. I knew it was some idiotic fascist bro-science, but yeah this is stupider than I thought it would be.
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u/SensFan84 2d ago
An educated person would have realized most of the information this administration passes on is either wrong or skewed to make them appear to be in a trade deficit. Some of the items that Canada has tariffed from the US (ie. dairy), have a tariff however do not reach the cap and the US never actually pays the tariff.
Most people see their argument and never fact check. It's ridiculous to be honest.
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u/DueceVoyeur 2d ago
I understand how the uneducated and low information voter gets duped.
What I don't understand is how allegedly educated Wall Street peeps don't/didn't speak out against the piss poor economic policy. But I guess voting for less taxes on zero profit is hard to give up.
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u/Candlelight_Fant4sia 3d ago
This administration is asleep at the wheel and relying on teSSler FSD...
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u/Effective-Bag5617 3d ago
Not a conspiracy nut bag by any stretch but if the market closes higher tomorrow I may become one.
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u/Altruistic_Drive_386 3d ago
I'm learning a lot of geography with that list. Found out where Reunion is. Thought it was made up...
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u/Rickystheman 3d ago
They must of dreamt up this bullshit equation, because when they actually looked to apply true reciprocal tariffs the numbers didn't look very impressive. In fact a bunch of countries would end up with much lower tariffs.
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u/PsychologicalLack155 3d ago
Then he wouldn't be able to push the sentiment that everyone is leeching off the US
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u/Rickystheman 3d ago
It's inconvenient when the truth gets in the way, nothing a little fuzzy math can't fix though.
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u/dathamir 3d ago
"I don't care what the numbers are, I want them to mean we're the victim here. Make it happen or you're fired."
Probably...
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u/Hopeful_Giraffe_4879 3d ago
Without even accounting for services, I bet. Because the EU just released an explanation and the deficit seems to be much lower than this
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u/ExhaustedHuman632 3d ago
The reason he picked the assholes he did was so he could get away with crap like this. No one is willing to tell him no. We are on month 3, it can get so much worse. The republicans and democrats better grow a spine and figure out how to get rid of this idiot and his entire incompetent regime.
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u/cryptofomo 3d ago
So the more reliant the US economy is on imports from country X is, the higher the tariffs will be! Makes perfect sense - if your aim is to cripple the US economy. I bet even Putin can’t believe how well his plan is working.
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u/RomiBraman 3d ago
Excluding services (Google, Amazon and such) because it would almost balance the deficits with many countries, starting with Europe.
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u/Electrical-Lab-9593 3d ago
I don't understand why in many cases having cheap imports is not a win that allows you to specialize on higher end technical services and products, then just tariff anything you need to for national/food security.... this is madness lol.
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u/BitBouquet 2d ago
Imagine being on an opposing team representing hundreds of millions of people and trying to seriously negotiate. And instead you peer into the complete intellectual void that is the Trump admin, running the most powerful country in the world.
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u/EatAssIsGold 2d ago
This is beyond dumb. I don't manage to find a spin in my head. This administration, all their political enabler, all the people that donated more than 1000$, have to go to prison for life in Guantanamo. All corporations that donated more than 100000$ have to be closed, all their management join the administration in prison for life. All corporations shareholders with rights > 1% in those companies closed and their management in prison for life. All shareholders with more than 10% shares in any of this company in prison for life. Every single one.
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u/Corrie7686 2d ago
Yep, and the UK number 11% is a trade SURPLUS. Yet there is still a 10% tariff with 25% on cars.
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u/Correct_Barracuda_48 2d ago
Deep "college student with a paper due in 6 hours" energy.
The frustration is how the incompetence is being used for cover to rob us blind. Each time we marvel at the fuck up, more taxes are going through to put the load on those with little, so that those with most can get more.
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u/TieAdorable4973 2d ago
Man, I guess this is what happens when you fire all the competent people and replace them with direct hires who have the experience of a drunk gnat.
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u/Living-Meaning3849 2d ago
Question wouldn’t this just make the trade deficit even worse with tariffs
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u/tuesday-next22 3d ago
I just tried Vietnam since I thought this was B.S and got 91%.
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u/PsychologicalLack155 3d ago
Someone made excel on this and found the correlation fo be 0.9999.
"there's no coincidence"
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u/Digfortreasure 3d ago
They are coming on strong to start the bogus dealmaking knowing this market it will rally after a few tweets
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u/morrighaan 3d ago
So do we just proceed as a country with these idiotic numbers and pretend that we do not have a mentally ill man and his vile enablers hijacking the plane?!
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u/flavius_lacivious 3d ago
I am so sick of the shitty oligarchy media in this country with zero integrity.
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u/Infinite_Adjuvante 3d ago
Thanks for doing the “math” discovery. This is actually very valuable information since the tariffs will go into effect based on it.
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u/MooseBoys 3d ago
At least they had the decency to add "including currency manipulation" which already throws the accuracy out the window.
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u/saysjuan 3d ago
This administration is full of idiots. This confirms there are no adults at the helm of this country. It’s like the party of christian values said “Jesus Take The Wheel”