. . . And even incoherent

So President Trump is making less sense than ever (see above). But his treatment of the auto industry is positively incoherent.

In an interview last week with the German newspaper Bild, Trump complained that Germans weren’t buying enough American cars, His evidence? He sees many more Mercedes-Benz models in New York City that he does Chevrolets in Germany.

If another German manufacturer, BMW, completes a factory in Mexico and sends cars to the United States from it, Trump threatened punishment.

“You can build cars for the United States, but for every car that comes to the USA, you will pay a 35 percent tax (which Trump may or may not have the authority to impose),” he said. (Whether the word “you” meant BMW alone or all German automakers was not clear.)

This is lunacy. BMW and Mercedes are the only auto manufacturers in the United

States who sell more of their U.S. production abroad than they do in the host country. Why are these companies, which provide good jobs (8,000 of them at BMW’s Spartanburg, S.C., plant) and good wages for American workers, fit subjects for punishment?

And what about those Chevrolets? General Motors stopped selling them (except for the Corvette and Camaro) in Europe in 2015 after 10 years of trying. (They were built in South Korea, which Trump may not have known.) Mercedes, on the other hand, makes many models in the United States.

About one car in eight sold in Europe is made there by GM (under the Vauxhall or Opel brand) or by Ford.; GM, Ford and BMW sales there are about the same. GM is the seventh largest of 16 European manufacturers and Ford is not far behind.

About BMW’s Mexican factory: It is intended to take over production from a German plant that will get a new model to assemble. Assuming that some of those German cars come to the United States now, why is it OK not to penalize production in Germany but to do so in Mexico?

Ignorant shots from the hip could set off an auto trade war that hurts everybody.