Dick Morris is providing his usual job of shilling for Donald Trump on Newsmax, while hiding the fact that he has served as an adviser to Trump’s campaign. His main focus has been tariffs, and he has been basically doing his Trumpian duty in shilling for those as well. This started before Trump was even elected; Morris declared in an Oct. 15 column that “Trump rightly justifies the tariffs by noting that the rest of the world has been taking advantage of our generosity in racking up a $773 billion trade surplus with us last year and that it’s now time to even the score.” After Trump took office, Morris promoted them again in a Feb. 1 TV appearance:
President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China will go into effect as planned, and how long they last will depend on the response from those countries, Dick Morris, an adviser to President-elect Donald Trump and host of the Newsmax show “Dick Morris Democracy,” said Saturday.
“Trump understands that the United States, with our population, our income, the personal wealth in this country and our freedom, our ability to buy and shop and acquire what we want is really unique in the world,” Morris told Newsmax’s “Saturday Report.”
Morris gushed over Trump’s hardball strategy on tariffs in his April 10 column:
The Democrats are mistaken if they think they have Trump on the ropes as he raises tariffs. He will win the fight and cement another part of his economic legacy.
While Trump is imposing tariffs on all countries, he knows that ultimately it will come down to a trade war between the U.S. and China — a war Trump and America will win.
As the other nations hit with higher American tariffs face American retaliation, they will fold and come hat in hand to Washington trying to cut bilateral trade deals with America.
Morris gushed that it was “appropriate” for Trump to jack up tariffs against China in an April 12 TV appearance, adding without evidence that former President Joe Biden “was subsidized by the Chinese, literally given a job at the University of Pennsylvania with Chinese [funding]” before becoming president.
Morris added more Trump sycophancy on tariffs in an April 26 TV appearance:
“And I think that what Trump is doing is saying he’s going to subsidize the American taxpayer after decades of subsidizing other countries and generate revenue from tariffs. It’s a gigantic change. It’s a total transformation in politics and economic philosophy.”
That process could lead to something hardly anyone in America will argue against, Morris said.
“Ultimately, it’s going to permit very significant tax cuts, maybe even at some point for eliminating the income tax in the United States.”
He said Trump may well end up being known as the man who created the “External Revenue Service,” or “ERS” in the U.S.
Morris hyped increased government revenue from tariffs in his May 2 column:
The Trump administration’s increased tariffs have given the government billions in extra revenue already, according to the Treasury Department.
From April 1-28, the Treasury Department reported $16.5 billion in tariff collections, compared to $9.6 billion in March, an increase of 72%. So not only are the tariffs driving companies to open offices and factories in the U.S. and opening foreign markets to our products and services, but they are bringing in massive revenue to our Treasury.
Remember that since colonial times, the tariff — not the income tax — has been the financial staple of the federal government.
[…]So the Trump tariffs could herald an entirely new era for the American economy. The stimulative effect of one-third lower tax rates would be incredible. Wealthy people from all over the world would line up to come to America … legally.
And we would transform our country into a low-tax paradise.
Morris repeated much of this in a May 3 TV appearance. He did more gushing in a May 23 column:
On April 5, Trump invoked his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) to address the national emergency posed by the large and persistent trade deficit to impose a universal 10% tariff on all imports.
With the U.S. importing $40 billion a month the order will generate over $400 billion in federal revenues annually. And, with even higher tariffs pending in negotiations with China, Mexico, Canada and the European Union, new revenues to the U.S. could easily surpass $1 trillion.
Morris didn’t mention that invoking emergency powers to raise tariffs is legally dubious.