Economist Uses Mean Girls to Break Down Trade Wars on MSNBC: ‘The U.S. is Regina George…’

How do the steel tariffs relate to Mean Girls? Economics writer Brendan Greeley broke it down like Kevin G.

In an appearance on MSNBC’s Velshi & Ruhle, Greeley explained that China is the new Queen Bee, and we like, invented her.

“It’s all a question of how much power the U.S. has in the international trade system,” Greeley explained. “Up until about 2000, the U.S. was, as far as international trade goes, Regina George at the beginning of the movie Mean Girls. We set the rules, everybody else lived by the rules, we chose who our friends were, Japan tried to keep the yen devalued, they tried to make ‘fetch’ happen, we said stop trying to make ‘fetch’ happen, they did what we asked.”

“What happened around 2000 was we invited a new pretty girl into the group. We said we can trade with China because it’s going to be good for us… That did not work out as we planned. So right now we are in the middle of the movie Mean Girls,” he continued. “The Lindsay Lohan character…gains power, and she’s not really a good person in the middle of that movie. That’s where we are with China… The question is, how do we respond, right?”

“We’re choosing the wrong thing,” Greeley asserted. “This tariff is lashing out in an indiscriminate way, it’s a way to prove our power again, and like Regina George in the middle of that movie, we don’t have the power we think we do.”

Four for you, Brendan Greeley. You go, Brendan Greeley.

Watch above, via MSNBC.

[image via screengrab]

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