Thread by @lydiadepillis

All rise for President Trump at the Economic Club. Applause at a line about exceeding expectations. “Thankyou, I was waiting for that,” Trump says.

Everything's great except the Fed, as usual. "But we all make mistakes, don’t we. Not too often, but we do make 'em," Trump says.

"We have more tax revenues coming into our treasury than we’ve ever had before." (That is ... not true. Corporate income taxes especially have fallen off a cliff) fred.stlouisfed.org/series/W006RC1…
fred.stlouisfed.org/series/B075RC1…

On the joy after repealing WOTUS: "Very strong men and women, almost all of them were crying, they said you’ve given our life back. You would have a puddle on your land and they would say you’re under river control, you’re under lake control. You would literally be arrested."

@ChadBown (I mean there was some passing bashing of past trade deals but not much)

Implies that we're winning cases at the WTO because of veiled threats: "We’re winning cases for the first time. We never won cases. They really think I’d do something very powerful." (The US has basically crippled the WTO's appellate body, the world's highest trade court)

"Kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers, dictators.
Anybody wants to come in, dictators, it’s ok, come on in, whatever’s good for the United States."

Repeats the lie that US consumers/businesses don't pay tariffs: "We’re taking in billions and billions of dollars that we’re not paying, because China is paying. Their supply chains are cracking very badly and they’re dying to make a deal."

On strong-arming Mexico into the USMCA, which is basically a minor refresh of NAFTA: "The reason it’s such a good deal for us is because I said ... If you don’t sign it, we’re going to just charge you tariffs, and they signed everything we wanted.”

This may be another thing he's talking about:

https://twitter.com/bbaschuk/status/1194313456792547333

Tough question from John Hess! "There is a growing consensus that the trade war has a cost and weighs on our growth and capital spending. What are your plans to address these economic headwinds?"

Trump answer: "The real cost would be if we did nothing. The cost of doing nothing was killing us as a country. When you say geez, let’s just keep it the way it was with china, that would be the real cost, we can’t do that."

After talking about payments to farmers, a long rambling tangent through military strength and killing al-Baghdadi etc. "We wiped out ISIS. We kept the oil."

Question from Gallogly: "How do you you think about risk as it relates to trade policy and climate change?" Trump delivers the usual spiel about other countries. "We have a relatively small piece of land. Nobody wants to talk about it, they want to talk about our country."

In closing, vote for me or else: "The truth is, you have no choice, because the people we’re running against are crazy." Applause! "I think the biggest risk is the election, and it’s just not acceptable."