He purposely repeats the falsehood that other countries will pay for tariffs because he wants his cult to continue to believe it and regurgitate it when its brought up as an argument.
He can then say look government will profit 2+ Trillion in tarrifs from countries paying us, so we dont need the federal income tax for billionaires and multi-millionaires anymore.
Which is the goal:
The top 1% save upwards of 2 trillion in taxes which become liquid money for them to buy things they want.
The bottom 90% will struggle to pay the tariffs and lose work and jobs will decline leading to more small businesses and mortgages failing.
The new 2 Trillion Yearly Liquid Cash for the top 1% will be spent to buy up those businesses and houses for pennies on the dollar.
He needs to repeat it so his base of alternate reality cultists, repeat it Ad nauseum. Because when the protests start and he declares martial law and goes after the protestors, the media and his cultists will still be on his side and even potentially willingly risk their lives for him for nothing in return.
They are planning a complete takeover. Selling of government and private property to the top 1% for eternal wealth accumulation. They will just move out of the country and have their employees manage things in the US while everyone else suffers the great depression.
They want a oligarchy. They want corporate run cities, with indentured servants who have no options but to work for them for as little as they want to pay you.
This is the new age of United States of Russia.
Linguists have studied Trumps rhetorical style and identified that he does two things that have proven to be very effective: repetition and simplicity. The latter is often preferred at the expense of nuance (at best) and accuracy (at worst).
Trumps gross oversimplification is a strategy. It's asymmetrical information warfare. By grossly oversimplifying, he forces his ideological opponents to expend a tremendous amount of energy as he simply repeats the same over-simplification.
Humans really want things to be simple. Even relatively smart people prefer a simple explanation to a complicated one. That's why we gravitate toward dichotomies, even when reality is expressly not I dichotomy.
Consider the very notion of "right" vs "left". Lumping all political discussions into right vs left shoehorns our entire political discourse into a pro wrestling level of sophistication. The reality is that each issue is multi-dimensional.
No one wants to hear that though. They want to here "this good; that bad", or even better "us good; they bad". It appeals to our most basal instincts.
I think Trump 100% understands what economists are saying when they say Americans ultimately pay for tariffs. I think he even knows that himself. He sees it as an "ends justify the means" situation. The wealthy can afford to ride it out. Many have taken large cash positions that they intend to plow back into assets after the market correction occurs.
The more nuanced Trump is, the more he alienates the people who elected him. Sticking to an oversimplified and incorrect position is advantageous for him. The challenge for his opposition is finding a message and communication style that gathers a larger cohort of the electorate.
