Mad King Trump's Tariff Disaster

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. Instead of a coordinated targetted & timed tariff campaign, tRump has a chaotic all-fronts ill-timed tariff war

In theory, the largest economy can win a tariff campaign that is specific to a particular objective in one sector and one country, such as electric vehicles from China as happened in 2024, because the effects on the target will be much greater than in the largest economy. The Chinese EV tariff was coordinated with Canada and Europe. And you would want to time it for when economic conditions are generally good so that ripple effects would be harder to notice and not contributing to negative news cycles. Thus you wouldn't mount other major economic measures at the same time that might require a little tolerance for small downward pressures.

tRump doesn't have a particular objective for his tariffs beyond making money and hurting other countries. He is achieving some limited success on the latter and the former hasn't taken hold yet. But in both objectives he will fail because trade will constrict and other countries like Canada have resolve and grit and elbows.

Instead of a focused competent campaign tRump has landed himself and the US in the middle of a global trade war while pressing down on the domestic economy with reduced government spending, reduced government employment, and reduced labour supply on the low wage end. He has declared economic war on North America, Europe, and Asia.

The business community is beginning to dimly catch on that tRump tariffs are not a negotiating tactic.

The economic damage will be a prominent feature of his legacy. He has a fair chance of living to see it, but it is an open question whether he will be more than marginally aware of it by then.