Uh, yes, he inherited a booming market, such an impressive achievement. The tax cuts of course are nice for take-home pay, but a) the Republicans in Congress passed them with, shall we say, varying levels of cooperation from Trump and b) there was a time that the Republicans had this thing called fiscal responsibility, which wasn't simply 'cut taxes at all costs' but rather 'make the budget balance'. As I understand it, kinda before my time, Bush senior even pretty much lost his re-election over his political courage in pushing a tax increase when the budget required it, even at the cost of breaking his earlier promise.

The point on defending other countries and the failure of most NATO members to meet their defense spending commitments is one of the rare cases in which a) Trump has a point I can agree with and b) he's actually sticking to it.

However, the second part of that sentence doesn't make any sense to me. Nobody is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to buy iPhones from China, televisions from Mexico, fancy machinery from Germany, whatever. American consumers and companies buy those things because they are cheaper, or offer a better price/quality ratio, than the ones made in the US (assuming any are made in the US at all). There's no loss to the US in that.

If you start raising tariffs, then sure, that's helpful to the American producers of the goods in question - but it will mean higher prices for the American consumers of those products, and then secondly American producers of different goods risk losing out when the other countries retaliate with tariff increases of their own. The benefits are very unlikely to outweigh the costs. And let's face it, if it's about bringing back lost jobs, the overwhelming majority of those isn't going to come back once they've gone. Not to mention that automatization is a bigger risk to manufacturing employment than factories moving abroad, at this point.