Throughout his campaign, Trump repeatedly told anyone he could brainwash that the U.S. doesn t win at anything anymore. Supposedly, we used to be the perennial powerhouse of the entire world (like Duke, North Carolina or Arizona are perennial powerhouses of NCAA basketball), but we ve fallen from that status, and now we don t win anything like the number of games we used to.In other words, we used to be able to tell the world what they would do, and they would do it. Now they don t. So Trump promised our working class that he would change that, and bring their jobs back, and make us so prosperous that those jobs would never disappear again and everyone would be begging to trade with us so they could have a tiny slice of our awesomeness.Whether Trump actually knows the truth or not is anyone s guess. He s too focused on  winning.  And he s told our suffering working class particularly blue-collar workers whose jobs are disappearing that the reason their jobs are gone is because we ve given too much to countries that don t deserve our largesse or whatever. He s convinced half the country that the 45 percent tariff he wants on imported goods from China, and the 35 percent tariff on goods from Mexico, will keep companies from outsourcing manufacturing.And the people who bought that are the ones who will hurt the worst from Trump s actual trade policies.The Economist pointed this massive problem with Trump s rhetoric out with a single chart. We have free trade agreements not just with two countries, but with 20. Those 20 countries represent a third of our imported goods, yes, but they also represent half of our exported goods:Image via The EconomistExport is one of the major drivers of our economy, and our dear Mr. Trump conveniently forgets that part of the equation when he rails against China, Mexico, and everyone else.In the chart above, the dark blue, on both sides, represents our trade due to NAFTA. We do an awful lot of exports to both Mexico and Canada, in addition to imports. It s not quite equal, but it s also not so disparate that we re at the horrible disadvantage that Trump claims we are with NAFTA. Millions of American jobs actually depend heavily on NAFTA remaining intact.As far as China, yeah, we seem to be at a big disadvantage. However, it actually balances out pretty well when we factor in our trade with other countries. China isn t raping us the way that Trump claims they are.In short, when you look at imports versus exports, we re not getting robbed at nearly the rate that Trump would have us believe. To listen to him talk, we only import foreign goods and we export nothing. If that were true, then yes, our trade agreements would be destroying American jobs the way he claims. The problem with that attitude, though, is not only that it s false, but it also shows that Trump s protectionist policies will destroy American exports and thus, American jobs.That, in turn, will further destroy the American working class   the very class that believes Trump will save them, their jobs, and their dignity from the evil, horrible, liberal Democrats that want to assassinate them. We wish these people knew how to look at this, but they don t. They re virtually killing themselves in their blindly staunch defense of Trump because they either can t, or won t, educate themselves.Education is for liberal elites anyway, so they shun it.Do we import more than we export? Yes. But imagine if some countries decided to stop accepting our products in retaliation for our not accepting theirs without a huge penalty attached. Our exports would fall off drastically, and thousands more Americans would lose their jobs, even with Trump s one-by-one coercion of companies looking to outsource.Seriously, Trump does not seem to understand any of this. We have a fucking president who doesn t get this and won t listen to the people who do because he thinks he s this amazing business genius and everyone else is just jealous, or something.He doesn t have to listen to anyone because he already knows everything, in other words.If he starts a trade war, which is what his trade policies would do should they actually be implemented, the working class he s claiming to protect will die an even more horribly painful death as countries retaliate against us for our unfair trade tactics.The global economy is far more complex than Trump and his idiotic, entitled, hypocritical, privileged, rich family and friends understand. We can t just implement protectionist policies, bring back those millions of lost manufacturing jobs, and give the world the finger. It does not work that way. It will never again work that way. Here s hoping that Congress can understand how he ll destroy us on trade and refuse to put it into action.Featured image by Drew Angerer via Getty Images