'Hopeless confusion': Scholar uses history lesson to dismantle Trump brags

Historian Eric Rauchway does not think much of President Donald Trump's plans to make America rich beyond its wildest dreams by leveling tariffs against imported goods that will be end up being paid by American consumers.

Speaking with Aaron Rupar's blog Public Notice, the University of California, Davis historian outlined what Rupar described as the "hopeless confusion" of Trump's policies.

Rauchway began by dissecting Trump's mistaken belief that the United States was at its richest in the late 19th Century when the country levied heavy tariffs on foreign products.

“The McKinley tariff was one of a series of laws passed in Congress in the 1890s that actually precipitated a severe economic downturn," he said. "If we had better data on it, we’d probably think of it like the Great Depression. There are millions of people unemployed. This is an era where you have armies of the unemployed protesting. It’s what helped give rise to the progressive movement.”

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Among other things, Rauchway argued that Trump is simply mistaken if he believes he can bring in a massive tax haul wielding heavy tariffs against imports.

"If you set a tariff at three percent, you collect three percent on all of your imports," he said. "That’s great. If you set a tariff at 300 percent, then nobody buys imports, so there’s no revenue collection. The president seems to believe he can impose prohibitively high tariffs and collect revenue, which you can’t do."

More broadly, Rauchway argued that there is a central contradiction at the heart of the Trump doctrine.

"He wants the society of the 1950s with the policies of the 1890s," he explained. "But you literally don’t get the society of the 1950s without a comprehensive rejection of the policies of the 1890s, even by Republicans."

Read the full interview here.