{"id":2138,"date":"2025-04-10T09:58:11","date_gmt":"2025-04-10T13:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/?p=2138"},"modified":"2025-04-10T09:58:11","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T13:58:11","slug":"a-trumpian-fallacy-redux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/2025\/04\/10\/a-trumpian-fallacy-redux\/","title":{"rendered":"A Trumpian fallacy redux"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/2018\/01\/18\/a-trumpian-fallacy\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"377\">During the first Trump administration<\/a>, I pointed out that his thinking about immigration committed the fallacy of conflating within-group and between-group differences. In an on-line discussion today, I realized that Trump&#8217;s tariff policy is guilty of it as well.<span id='easy-footnote-1-2138' class='easy-footnote-margin-adjust'><\/span><span class='easy-footnote'><a href='https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/2025\/04\/10\/a-trumpian-fallacy-redux\/#easy-footnote-bottom-1-2138' title=' A propos something else, I taught the fallacy in class yesterday. Synchronicity!'><sup>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A thousand memes have already pointed out the silliness of thinking that trade should be balanced with every single trading partner. For example: I buy from the grocery store, but they never pay me to teach them philosophy. By Trump&#8217;s logic, I should impose a tariff on groceries until this is rectified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Trade imbalances can be an economic problem, but at the level of total overall trade. And it may be a problem that trade is with some partners rather than others. So even if Trump is right that trade deficits are a problem, he&#8217;s framed the problem in utterly the wrong way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the old post, I lament that the fallacy doesn&#8217;t have a pithy name. Reflecting on it now, I guess it&#8217;s just an instance of <em>reference class problems<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During the first Trump administration, I pointed out that his thinking about immigration committed the fallacy of conflating within-group and between-group differences. In an on-line discussion today, I realized that Trump&#8217;s tariff policy is guilty of it as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[38,22],"class_list":["post-2138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-et-cetera","tag-fallacies","tag-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7PjAo-yu","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2138"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2139,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2138\/revisions\/2139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}