After some smalltalk with an unidentified reporter who can fairly be described as a shaved Sasquatch, Donald Trump addresses how the cost of his tariffs will not be passed along to consumers.  “I think that you’re gonna find that when we do it, and I-I think different countries will be tariffed differently.  Y’know there are some that make tremendous margins on us, we have countries–I won’t go into it now–but we have countries that are charging us 200% and 250 and 300% and we charge them nothing and it’s insane and you just can’t do it and it’s really not sustainable.

“It’s not sustainable.  There are certain countries that, I-I-I’d rather not mention them now because I’ll be mentioning them if and when we win but they’re gonna have to pay up, and uh, it’s not gonna have inflationar–if anything, it’s gonna be the opposite.  We’re gonna be paying off debt ’cause we have too much debt.  As a country we have too much debt.”

Note that once again, Trump doesn’t actually answer the questionhe’s asked, and the man who added new debt to the federal ledger at a rate higher than any predecessor or successor believes that none of the costs of the tariff would be passed along to consumers; experts say the ongoing costs of Trump’s first set of tariffs have already added more than $600 to average household costs while shrinking the GDP by 0.2%.  His new tariff plan would shave off an additional 0.8% of GDP.

The bigger problem for Trump, though, is that he’s made promised things like IVF would be free for everyone, while promising not to raise taxes or tax tips.  In fact, Trump promises everyone a tax cut.  His new ploy–no taxes for overtime pay–is a gift to employers who won’t have to contribute their share of Social Security and other taxes while making overtime work more economical for employers.  But he’s yet to explain in any concrete terms how any of this will be financed, except through tariffs which will ultimately be paid by consumers.