There will be growth in the spring

To the extent Trump believes in anything, he believes in this:

Your trade adviser, Peter Navarro, says 90 deals in 90 days is possible. We’re now 13 days into the point from when you lifted the reciprocal, the discounted reciprocal tariffs. There’s zero deals so far. Why is that? 

No, there’s many deals. 

When are they going to be announced? 

You have to understand, I’m dealing with all the companies, very friendly countries. We’re meeting with China. We’re doing fine with everybody. But ultimately, I’ve made all the deals.

Not one has been announced yet. When are you going to announce them?

I’ve made 200 deals. 

You’ve made 200 deals?

100%.

Can you share with whom?

Because the deal is a deal that I choose. View it differently: We are a department store, and we set the price. I meet with the companies, and then I set a fair price, what I consider to be a fair price, and they can pay it, or they don’t have to pay it. They don’t have to do business with the United States, but I set a tariff on countries. Some have been horrible to us. Some have been okay. Nobody’s been great. Nobody’s been great. Everybody took advantage of us. What I’m doing is I will, at a certain point in the not too distant future, I will set a fair price of tariffs for different countries. These are countries—some of them have made hundreds of billions of dollars, and some of them have made just a lot of money. Very few of them have made nothing because the United States was being ripped off by every, almost every country in the world, in the entire world. So I will set a price, and when I set the price, and I will set it fairly according to the statistics, and according to everything else. For instance, do they have the VAT system in play? Do they charge us tariffs? How much are they charging us? How much have they been charging us? Many, many different factors, right. How are we being treated by that country? And then I will set a tariff. Are we paying for their military? You know, as an example, we have Korea. We pay billions of dollars for the military. Japan, billions for those and others. But that, I’m going to keep us a separate item, the paying of the military. Germany, we have 50,000 soldiers—

I’m just curious, why don’t you announce these deals that you’ve solidified? 

I would say, over the next three to four weeks, and we’re finished, by the way.

You’re finished? 

We’ll be finished. 

Oh, you will be finished in three to four weeks. 

I’ll be finished. Now, some countries may come back and ask for an adjustment, and I’ll consider that, but I’ll basically be, with great knowledge, setting—ready? We’re a department store, a giant department store, the biggest department store in history. Everybody wants to come in and take from us. They’re going to come in and they’re going to pay a price for taking our treasure, for taking our jobs, for doing all of these things. But what I’m doing with the tariffs is people are coming in, and they’re building at levels you’ve never seen before. We have $7 trillion of new plants, factories and other things, investment coming into the United States. And if you look back at past presidents, nobody was anywhere near that. And this is in three months.

Will you call President Xi if he doesn’t call you?

No.

You won’t?

Nope.

Has he called you yet?

Yep.

When did he call you?

He’s called. And I don’t think that’s a sign of weakness on his behalf.

But you would think it’s a sign of weakness if you called him?

I don’t–I just look—

Well, what did he say?

If people want to–well, we all want to make deals. But I am this giant store. It’s a giant, beautiful store, and everybody wants to go shopping there. And on behalf of the American people, I own the store, and I set prices, and I’ll say, if you want to shop here, this is what you have to pay.

This guy is a complete fucking moron. Yes he’s utterly crooked and a pathological liar, but underneath it all his sheer bottomless stupidity is the efficient cause of everything else, because he doesn’t understand anything about anything, because he’s not good at thinking, just like I’m not good at shooting free throws.

The thing about MAGA world is that Trump could have a free throw shooting contest with Steph Curry and Curry would go 20 for 20, and Trump would hit a total of three and shoot five airballs and several other bricks off the back rim, and then he would proclaim himself the winner, the best free throw shooter anyone had ever seen, and respectable journalists would say, “but sir, three for 20 . . .” and MAGA world would say you can prove anything with statistics and what about the China virus?

You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.