It is even more frustrating to see free-market American business leaders be silent about this behavior, for fear of losing their communication channels to the administration. What a strange situation to be in.
It is not “fear of losing communication channels”. It is “ fear of retribution.” Trump can and will use the full power of the state to make life unpleasant for anyone who crosses him.
They're keeping their mouths shut because the GOP's upcoming big 2025 tax cuts bill will inflate the value of their stock options bigly, even extremely bigly. Or so they hope. Because they also know that the equities market; ergo, their beloved stock options, will be royally fucked the moment Trump/GOP's chaotic tweaking of the economy and civil service pops the equities bubble.
But at least our oligarchic class can be heartened knowing that Trump's cuts to the IRS will severely hamstring its abilities to collect back taxes from their naughtiest members. No matter the harm to the economy.
So-called business leaders have emerged as Trump's sycophants. Are these individuals so psychologically insecure that they must receive adulation from Trump?
Trump doesn’t have an ideology. All Trump cares about is protecting the image of strength (not actual strength, mind you, but the perception of strength). And nothing projects strength like single-handedly taking a sledgehammer to decades-old alliances and commercial relationships.
They just need to order one of those inflatable pop-up auto manufacturing plants off of Temu and set it up in a non-union state. Done and dusted. Two-week shipping will give them plenty of time to spare.
On the plus side, the working class that voted Trump into office will be the ones most vulnerable to a recession. Hopefully, they will come to regret their votes. This is exactly what the Democrats need for a revival.
I am hoping working class and middle class voters will feel the pain of Trump's tariffs, deportations and Medicaid cuts before Trump is able to completely rig our elections, so that Democrats can at least regain control of the House in the 2026 midterms, and have a chance to regain the White House in 2028. It will also be necessary for the courts to successfully slow down Trump's effort to become a dictator, with complete control of the military, the FBI and the Justice Department, in order to allow the Democrats to regain control of the House in 2026.
As a Democrat, I hate having to root for economic hardship to restore sane governance. I suppose there was no other way once Harris lost. Trump was determined to rule the way he wanted to, the well being of the people be damned.
Agreed, I don’t want a recession or more inflation. I want Democrats to moderate and follow a Slow Boring approach to politics to build a larger coalition. But if we are in for economic pain, my optimistic personality wants to look for silver linings.
That is what Biden did. Americans decided recovery wasn't happening fast enough and went back to the demented demagogue.
Honestly, Trump winning again has turned me into a full-blown accelerationist. It's clear to me at this point that the only way they will learn is by touching the stove, and since that's happening anyway, I want them burned so badly they'll never forget it. If we survive as a country, "tariff" needs to be a dirty word for the next 50 years.
They were convinced by RW media that Biden + Dems were causing consumer inflation, and voted with their wallets. But it wasn't actually economy--which is (or was ) literally the best in the entire WORLD in terms of inflation, employment, etc. It was the PERCEPTION of that absolutely terrible Biden economy, courtesy of our friends at FOX News, Sinclair, etc.
Which FOX is now magically rehabilitating now that it's once again the Trump economy.
And tariffs are very useful, if exercised intelligently. Like Biden did with 60% tariffs on Chinese EV's. Which is what both US and EU need to do to prevent the highly subsidized Chinese EV sector from bankrupting all non-China EV manufacturing.
The RW noise machine did indeed engender a lot of the negativity about the recovery under Biden and is indeed trying to put lipstick on the Trump pig, but propaganda only goes so far. When your house is being foreclosed on and you can't make the payments on your F-150 because you're out of work at the factory and everything costs 25% more than it did six months ago, no amount of media spin is going to conceal how bad things are, and it might actually make it worse. That's what happened during the Great Recession under Bush (who'd previously enjoyed a similarly favorable propaganda environment) and it is I suspect what will happen again.
As for tariffs, I agree there are targeted applications where they can be useful, but the economically illiterate ideas that indiscriminate tariffs are paid by other countries, promote strong domestic industries, and help American businesses need to be staked through the heart.
The Ipsos poll last November of GOP voters found that 85% get some/most/all of their news from FOX News; and 80% of these strongly believed the major Trump/GOP bullshit talking points regarding the economy.
So 68% of Trump/GOP voters completely live in alternative facts fantasyland. Where Dems murder babies after birth, Haitian illegals eat people's dogs and cats, where crime/unemployment are at historic highs (instead of roughly the opposite), where we're already in a recession, and where inflation is just as high as it was 2-3 years earlier, and so on.
The most galling thing, is that if Trump had actually won in '20, FOX News would've done a 180' on inflation, running nonstop segments on how much *worse* inflation was in literally every single other nation. American voters would've been thanking their lucky stars the President's policies had kept consumer inflation the lowest by far in the entire world.
Would be nice if Democrats figured out a vision for the future and articulated a positive vision for America instead of just saying: "Trump sucks, we told you so. Vote for us."
Could it be that he assumed Trump would no longer be a threat by 2024 and that he (Biden) could retire gracefully having done his bit to save the country? It could also be that every president (Trump included) thinks, towards the end of their first term, “Hey, wait, I’m just starting to get the hang of this; let me have another go!”
I don’t know, probably the same reason the manager of my NY team told me he was going to retire at 65 and is now 68, still there. Biden made a selfish and poor decision with disastrous consequences for his party and the country, but the decision wasn’t that surprising or unusual. Were you surprised?
I actually think people are wrong on this issue, including the Democrats. Biden still thinks he could have beaten Trump, and he might be right. He knew that most people don't pay attention to the election until a couple of months before it, and planned a blitzkrieg accordingly - but was bumped by the party.
My own feeling is that although they won't necessarily admit it, there are a significant number of voters who won't vote for a woman, and even more who won't vote for a black woman. Note that the two times Trump won were the first two times in history when one of the major parties nominated a woman. When he ran against a man, he lost.
No argument that racism and sexism factor into how people vote. On the other hand, President Obama in 2008 won the popular vote by the widest margin of any presidential election the past 28 years, and Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by more than 2%. Racism/sexism certainly a factor but not determinative.
Biden had average communication skills in his best days and clearly lost several steps between 2021 and 2024. We are arguing a hypothetical that can’t be proven either but in my view, it is wildly unrealistic to think Biden would have surged under the intense scrutiny of the last two months of the election. He would have skipped further debates and mostly hidden in the White House. Not likely to have been a winning strategy. And if, instead, he did another debate and campaigned aggressively, it would have been humiliating and embarrassing for everyone.
You don't have to root for it -- it's going to happen no matter what you want. When Trump and co. cut off so much funding from the government, which affects private companies as well, and kill off a good chunk of NIH and NSF funding, and force out 100s of thousands of Federal employees all across the country, it would take a miracle to maintain economic growth.
To win back the working class, the Democrats need to give up gender lunacy and racial wokeness. The working class hates it by broad margins.
Heck, I voted for Trump, but if you gave me a 1980's style Democrat today, I would probably be on board. My only concern would be abortion, but I could get over that if the party otherwise was truly committed to creating an economy -- not a bunch of handouts -- that put the working class back in the driver's seat of America.
Unfortunately, the the Democratic Party shows no indication of having figured that out.
It won’t matter, at least in the short term, if the GOP is blamed for a recession or more inflation. People care about identity/cultural issues until something happens to their pocketbooks.
I think you underestimate just how insane the Democratic party looks. Defunding the police 5 years ago hurt them with the urban poor and minorities (who look to police to keep their non-gated neighborhoods safe.) And "men can get pregnant" struck huge fractions of the non-college educated sect as batshit crazy (which it is.)
You're correct, the pocketbook does trump everything else politically... eventually. But if people get disenchanted with Trump and give the Dems another look, what will they see today? A party still obsessed with the made-up racial grievance and postmodernist sexual weirdness.
"A party still obsessed with the made-up racial grievance and postmodernist sexual weirdness."
Absolute and total hogwash. I challenge you to find even a single time when Harris or Walz campaigned on these issues.
The problem here is that a lot of working class people have been brainwashed into thinking that social media posts from a few fringe campus activists represent mainstream Democratic opinions. They don't, but it will apparently take getting clobbered with the damage to their livelihoods that Trumpist governance is going to create to make these working class GOP voters realize they've been hoodwinked.
I don't have time for this. Harris went all in on both these issues in 2020. Biden went all in for transgenderism throughout his presidency, literally beginning on the first day with the "Executive Order On Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government." He used his DOJ and DOE to twist Title VII and Title IX to force schools to put men on womens' sports teams for heavens sake. Even the average voter who pays little attention (my mother, who voted for Harris) is appalled at this.
Harris was given lots of opportunity for a Sister Souljah moment on this issue. That she never took it is telling.
Even if she had gone "all in" on them in 2020 (she didn't), she barely mentioned them at all in 2024. Biden signed a couple of EOs on the issue but 99.99% of his time and energy was spent on other, more consequential issues.
Face it. You (and a lot of other people) got snowed. You let a career con man trick you into thinking a handful of transgendered people playing high school lacrosse was the most consequential issue facing America, and now said con man is steering us into a severe recession that's going to cost thousands of lives, destroy our state capacity and relationships with allies, and severely damage the future of our country.
If I were you, I'd reflect on the monumentally poor judgment and lack of perspective I'd shown and try to make better decisions in the future. Or, you can just go on freaking about those ten trans athletes. Your choice.
"I think you underestimate just how insane the Democratic party looks."
You mistook the loudness of left-wing fringe lunatics for actual influence. While there was a lot of noise about defunding the police, there was little appetite to actually do it, and Biden even openly was against it.
Meanwhile, with the Republicans, the lunatics have been running the asylum for a while. The Tea Party, massive Congressional obstruction under Obama, electing a massive crook who blatantly lied, re-electing the same massive crook after he became even more openly crooked and incompetent, etc.
I think you underestimate just how insane the Republican party looks.
Easy there, dude. Trump won by like 2 percentage points; he didn’t even get 50% of the vote. If the Dems are half as crazy as you make them out to be then why the hell didn’t Trump win in a landslide? Kamala Harris was one of the lamest presidential candidates in my (admittedly short) lifetime and yet she came pretty close to cleaning Trump’s clock. Makes me think the average voter (who tbh doesn’t remember anything from 4 weeks ago, let alone 4 years) cares less about wokeness and more about inflation, immigration, and Biden’s stupid senile dash for a second term.
The best answer is that Trump is a narcissistic loon. Everyone knows that. And yet voters across the country and at almost every level of government broadly elected him and Republicans instead of the Democratic Party.
You talk about a flawed candidate? How crazy do your policies have to be to lose to Donald Trump?
Yes, Trump is a narcissistic loon, and the fact that you voted for him shows a lot about the hardcore MAGA electorate. The Democrats were arguably more woke in 2020 than they were in 2024, and yet somehow they managed to beat Trump (maybe because he let a goddamn pandemic run wild on his watch).
I get the feeling that no matter what Trump does, MAGA types like you will keep defending him. "Yeah, Trump is scamming the country with his crypto schemes and may force us into a recession, but can you believe the other guy?" What a shame.
The issue is the gullibility of people like you to obvious culture war bait.
You serve at least one useful purpose on here: serving as an example of the kind of voter who shows little to no awareness of the things most affecting their lives.
Here you are, weeks into the Trump presidency, ignoring the real life damage that he’s doing to the USA and the world, but going out of your way to show people that you believed everything you heard from right wing propagandists during 2024.
Gavin's switch is long overdue and hopefully sets a precedent for Democrats in the coming mid-terms. We will see. People need to think clearly about sex, gender, and liberty. Note that "boys" is not the correct term here, but arguing for trans women in sports is tantamount to voting Barry Bonds into the hall. That is not a hill I would die on.
It's was especially upsetting when the Democrats forced me to transition genders against my will. Losing my job and a good chunk of my savings might hurt, but at least Trump might let me transition back.
No, you’re not likely to ever vote for a Democrat. Otherwise you’d have already voted for Obama. Your bio clearly indicates that you’re a religious person and you mentioned that abortion is an issue for you. 80s Democratic candidates lost in blowouts. Even Democrats don’t want 80s Democrats.
The Democrats need to get their shit together and their house in order for a revival. Start coming up with and proposing bold ideas for the future, including modernization of government in important ways, not just defending the status quo. Stop heeding advocacy groups and track the center of the country while defending the rights and dignity of all Americans (calling for Dems to “end gender ideology” seems to be in practice largely a call for a return to state rationalized bigotry.)
Nah fam, they'll just blame Biden, the Deep State, Elon... Literally anyone but Trump. They voted for this but they never expect anything negative to affect them personally.
Speaking of the Democrats: From my Euopean viewpoint I perceive much less Democrat activity than I‘d have presumed. Is this a perception issue or real lack of activity?
(And yes, I know Europe has its own issues to handle, and quite a lot of them).
Democratic reforms are happening in the U.S., particularly at the state and intra-party levels, even though they might not be obvious from Europe. State to country comparisons might clarify that pushback. Conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and decades of legislative gridlock have fueled a more populist, autocratic strain in U.S. politics, enabled by a Senate structure that can empower a minority of voters.
Slavery’s legacy, as opposed to Europe’s colonial experience, also colors civil rights discussions in unique ways. Americans often pursue change institutionally (judicially or on a state level) rather than through mass protests—shaping a different political landscape than in Europe - which arguably are state level protests. What is different here is that we consider ourselves Americans more than Europeans consider themselves EU citizens.
My comment aimed at a different aspect, though - I was wondering why I perceive less public pushback to irresponsible activities than I‘d have expected.
Could be either a asymmetric media coverage or maybe tactical/timing reasons …
I don't want to be too tinfoil hat here but: it is possible that at least some of this tariff whiplash is just insider trading or more precisely, market manipulation by Trump or those close to him?
We know very little about Trump's finances/conflicts of interests, other than the fact they are probably large. Might it be possible that on days where he puts tariffs in place, he has taken a large short position and cashes out when the market crashes? The reverse when he pulls back on tariffs; he just goes long and rides the market bump.
Since only he knows when and how tariffs are put in place and then repealed, and that there is a predictable and fairly quick market reaction to each move, it seems like easy money for a billionaire with few scruples and opaque financial disclosures.
Trump doesn’t need inside trading to profit from his stupid tariff jerking, he’s collecting $5 million fees for meetings at MarALago for the affected companies to plead for exemptions. And the stock market is down because the tariffs and uncertainty will cause companies to slow profits immediately and sharply, so the value of their stocks have fallen. It’s a nightmare, and all the people complaining about DOGE and Musk, while ignoring tariffs were all barking up the wrong tree.
Anti-wokeness seems pretty pro-stupid at this point.
All of this nonsense and belligerence coming from the US is going to impact trade for years to come. A lot harder to rebuild trust than it is to burn it all down.
"His inherent suspicion of other countries makes him want to be less dependent on them."
But isn't this essentially your logic with regarding industrial policy, Noah? I mean, if you have no suspicions or concerns about other countries, why should it matter whether you make or import your airplanes or semiconductors?
I agree that Trump's tariffs are mostly stupid (Mexico is at least debatable) however, he appears to be applying the same basic framework you are, just more vigorously than you would prefer. You're not exactly a Hayekian free-trader either, Noah.
My biggest complaint with Trump isn't the policy but the unpredictability. If he believes in tariffs, enact gradually increasing tariffs over the course of his Presidency on a scheduled basis: 5% per year maybe. It's the "will he or won't he" waffling that drives me nuts.
Note, anyone who hasn't read Art of the Deal really should. It lays out 40 year old Trump's negotiating tactics. There are two things I recall from the book: 1) be unpredictable; 2) always ask for 300% of what you want and whine every step of the way down. Both strategies have featured prominently in the last month.
It’s not “the same basic framework”. Noah’s idea is that we should trade with everyone, but we should specifically avoid being reliant on potential rivals for strategically important goods like semiconductors, electricity generation, and vehicles. Noah doesn’t mind buying toys and clothing from China, or even buying solar panels and batteries and computer chips from Germany, Canada, or Taiwan.
Whereas Trump thinks that even relying on Canada for toilet paper is a thing we should never do because the Canadians are so dastardly and untrustworthy and taking advantage of us by cooperating in trade.
Yeah, looking on his tariffs with Canada his most foolish thing is to tariff potash (Canada dominates the potash industry), to replace it by a FTA with Argentina (which has potash potential, but just opens for mining and would take several years to start exports!)
And even a FTA with Argentina is not guaranteed (even though Trump loves Milei, agribusiness lobbies in the US might not love the competition with grain, beef and wine from Argentina!)
Trump's philosophy as articulated in the Art of the Deal might work for negotiating two-bit real estate deals and building contracts in Atlantic City where you hold most of the leverage. That kind of thing is mostly what he's done in his life.
It does not work in complex, multi-lateral, multi-level international negotiations which feature multiple sets of stakeholders on both levels of the negotiation. It just makes you look like an unpredictable buffoon and needlessly poisons wells, making it impossible to reach lasting agreements. Trump has a junior high lunch table bully's grasp of negotiating strategy.
My recommendation for the book is purely to understand how Trump thinks with the goal of better understanding what he's doing.
I agree completely a strategy that works for one-off real estate deals is very suboptimal for the multi-round game theory world of international relations.
It's worse than "sub-optimal". It's downright self-destructive.
Trump is an empire-wrecking level of incompetent. Electing him is going to permanently change the course of this country's future for the extreme worse.
Trump of course will never feel whatever the financial effects of what he’s doing bring on, any more than he actually feels the grievances or understands the problems of those who elected him because they thought he did. In fact he never really shared any of those grievances or problems, so there’s no reason for anyone to believe he could. Not that such realities have ever. diminished the fever that is Trumpism.
But his actions may have the effect most of the rest of us do want. which is that fever finally breaking. Hopefully that will happen before the patient (the United States) has suffered too much damage.
So the the Left wing, postmodernist, gender lunacy, racial wokeness fever has broken.
The right-wing Trump-personality cult fever is breaking.
Then what? That's a serious question. What takes the place of both of those? And that's the key; it must appeal to followers of both ideologies not just one of them.
The comparison is wholly untenable. Gender lunacy, as you call it, is simply recognition that human sexuality is a far more complex thing than the right wing would have it.
I’m not even going to try to define racial wokeness - like so much of the criticism from the right, it’s just buzz words thrown together against the wall to see if anything sticks.
Trumpism, on the other hand, is the single most anti-democratic and destructive force ever unleashed on us in our history. And it’s been unleashed by an American President who has repeatedly shown his utter disdain and disavowal of our electoral process, our Constitution, and the rule of law, and by an unelected machete wielder with an equal disdain and disavowal.
I don't see the problem that you're trying to illustrate with those links (though I can't see more than the headline of the first). Why is it a problem to call someone with a dick or a beard a woman if that's what they want to be called? I find it unrelatable and maybe a bit "weird", but why should it offend me?
None of this seems in any way related to federal governance. Aside from a very small number of NCAA athletes, I struggle to see how the Biden admin's limited support for trans related policies negatively impacted voters. And for what it's worth, I'd agree that their Title IX play around trans inclusion was ill advised - like I said, that doesn't seem like a matter for the federal government. Was it just bigotry or is there an actual negative impact that I'm missing?
I’d suggest you read, among other things, Jennifer Finny Boylan’s new book, Cleavage - Men, Women, and the Distance Between Us. You could use a wider perspective.
As a long-time athletic coach, I have some serious reservations about trans-males competing with women if they transitioned after puberty, but that is only one segment among many in this area. As with all such issues, making blanket laws is seldom the best avenue of approach.
You seem very concerned by what a potential Harris administration as a left wing Trojan horse could’ve done if elected. Can you articulate the worst case scenario in concrete terms of a Harris presidency?
What are the odds that someone in his circle is making money of long calls or puts? Like, they can't really be planning to do this every 30 days right? What is going to happen is that businesses are going to plan on just enacting policies as if the policies are going to go into effect because it is better to manage that way instead of wishing and hoping in my opinion.
I hope the fever is breaking, but the majority of people voted for this, and for the folks that have voted for him 2 or 3 times in a row by now, I think it's sunken cost fallacy. They really do believe that there is some master plan, and he is a genius. Or now, I see that they conveniently aren't following anything related to politics....
Just to be clear, only 49.8% of voters voted for this. That’s more than the number that voted against this, but there were a few percent of voters who voted for third parties. (Not to mention the people who voted in 2020 but didn’t feel like voting in 2024.)
I think Elon and DOGE are less about anti-woke and way more about the plain corruption. Cancel contracts with competitors of Musks companies and and then start replacing them with contracts with Musk's companies. If you object than you too can be fired. What is anti-woke about attacking the VA that overwhelmingly serves white men? About selling off 70% of government buildings. About chopping at at the IRS? About softening up Social Security for privatization? This all seem to be about creating opportunities for Muc sk himself and billionaire class cronies. To quote game of Thrones "chaos is a ladder" that apparently Musk and others intend to climb.
This what unites Trump and Musk, both are grabbing opportunities for self-enrichment openly with both hands. In fact the plan view corruption from which the chaos helps distract in the last six weeks has been stunning. Cryptocurrency reserve? Million dollar dinner tickets at Mar Largo? Pardons and prosecutions dropped against wealthy criminals after Trump meme coin investments? Threats to pay up to be inside the tent or face criminal investigation. And this is just a fraction. Truly breathtaking.
Tariffs he does because he can without Congress, and even some Republicans would oppose him. But tariffs, immigration, etc are issues he's seen work overseas to secure votes from folks left behind with similarly disaffected right wing leaders, and he's just winging it and lashing out at critics--especially intellectual ones who make him feel inferior. And race is a fairly constant dividing line in the U.S. so he's exploiting that as well as he did with Obama.
As a Canadian I have a different sense of what’s at play here. I’m an avid reader of many blogs on Substack and it seems to me that the number one issue I have with most of the opinions expressed is that they come from a place of treating Trump as a rational person. People still listen to what he says instead of watching what he does. And what he does is chaos. He loves it. When everything he does is destabilizing and bad for the economy the only conclusion one can make is that it’s on purpose. He wants to tank the economy so he and his billionaire cohort can swoop in and pick through the rubble for some bargains. The fate of the nation or its citizens are of no concern. This is exactly what our Prime Minister said when addressing the 25% tariffs, but about our economy not the US.
The present Prime Minister’s father once said about Canada and the US it was a bit like being a mouse living with an elephant so when Trump does as he does we’ve seen it before but now it’s not subtle cajoling it’s vulgar and in your face. I have nothing but good thoughts for your nation but I fear a citizenry that elected this man may find it very hard to rid themselves of him before not only national but global events may change the world irrevocably.
You are forgetting the other, even more important part of Trump's personal ideology, which is that he's a bully and narcissist who has a pathological desire for social dominance -- to invoke fear in his enemies and gain the adulation of his fans. Trump is motivated by grievance and vengeance, and tariffs are a baseball bat that he can swing around to make himself feel more important. Tariffs are something that many people fear, and they are a lever of power that are unconstrained by congress or the courts.
"America voted for a guy they thought would deregulate the economy and fix inflation — a modern-day Reagan. Instead they got a dime-store Mao"
Trump was very clear about his love for tariffs in the election cycle. Anyone that thought he was here to fix inflation just wasn't thinking very clearly.
There was also a major failure by the media to talk about Trump's policies rather than his character or threat to democracy. People wanted to punish Biden for his inflation, but if they didn't understand Trump would make it worse how come they weren't informed about it?
"Dime-Store Mao" sounds like a fun nickname for Trump moving forward.
Dollar store Mao. Dime stores don't exist anymore...
To stomp out Woke, and all vital signs deteriorating rapidly, Trump and his minions have intentionally induced the Stroke Economy.
It is even more frustrating to see free-market American business leaders be silent about this behavior, for fear of losing their communication channels to the administration. What a strange situation to be in.
It is not “fear of losing communication channels”. It is “ fear of retribution.” Trump can and will use the full power of the state to make life unpleasant for anyone who crosses him.
It's both. It's part of the authoritarian playbook.
Yes. Just ask James Comey and Peter Strozk, both of whom got IRS audits during Trump1. Weaponized justice, indeed.
And the “champions of free speech” are also silent about this. Presumably for fear of being cancelled…
They're keeping their mouths shut because the GOP's upcoming big 2025 tax cuts bill will inflate the value of their stock options bigly, even extremely bigly. Or so they hope. Because they also know that the equities market; ergo, their beloved stock options, will be royally fucked the moment Trump/GOP's chaotic tweaking of the economy and civil service pops the equities bubble.
But at least our oligarchic class can be heartened knowing that Trump's cuts to the IRS will severely hamstring its abilities to collect back taxes from their naughtiest members. No matter the harm to the economy.
So-called business leaders have emerged as Trump's sycophants. Are these individuals so psychologically insecure that they must receive adulation from Trump?
If the ideology is to work on self reliance, then why make cuts to R&D? It's hard to say if there is a coherent ideology at all.
Yes, why would a dollar store Mao threaten the CHIPS Act?
Trump doesn’t have an ideology. All Trump cares about is protecting the image of strength (not actual strength, mind you, but the perception of strength). And nothing projects strength like single-handedly taking a sledgehammer to decades-old alliances and commercial relationships.
Hey, he gave the auto industry 30 days to relocate their suppliers. What’s the problem?
They just need to order one of those inflatable pop-up auto manufacturing plants off of Temu and set it up in a non-union state. Done and dusted. Two-week shipping will give them plenty of time to spare.
A wry joke, of course.
On the plus side, the working class that voted Trump into office will be the ones most vulnerable to a recession. Hopefully, they will come to regret their votes. This is exactly what the Democrats need for a revival.
I am hoping working class and middle class voters will feel the pain of Trump's tariffs, deportations and Medicaid cuts before Trump is able to completely rig our elections, so that Democrats can at least regain control of the House in the 2026 midterms, and have a chance to regain the White House in 2028. It will also be necessary for the courts to successfully slow down Trump's effort to become a dictator, with complete control of the military, the FBI and the Justice Department, in order to allow the Democrats to regain control of the House in 2026.
I don’t want them to, but if it’s coming it’s definitely a silver lining. Trump would be saving Democrats from themselves.
As a Democrat, I hate having to root for economic hardship to restore sane governance. I suppose there was no other way once Harris lost. Trump was determined to rule the way he wanted to, the well being of the people be damned.
Agreed, I don’t want a recession or more inflation. I want Democrats to moderate and follow a Slow Boring approach to politics to build a larger coalition. But if we are in for economic pain, my optimistic personality wants to look for silver linings.
That is what Biden did. Americans decided recovery wasn't happening fast enough and went back to the demented demagogue.
Honestly, Trump winning again has turned me into a full-blown accelerationist. It's clear to me at this point that the only way they will learn is by touching the stove, and since that's happening anyway, I want them burned so badly they'll never forget it. If we survive as a country, "tariff" needs to be a dirty word for the next 50 years.
They were convinced by RW media that Biden + Dems were causing consumer inflation, and voted with their wallets. But it wasn't actually economy--which is (or was ) literally the best in the entire WORLD in terms of inflation, employment, etc. It was the PERCEPTION of that absolutely terrible Biden economy, courtesy of our friends at FOX News, Sinclair, etc.
Which FOX is now magically rehabilitating now that it's once again the Trump economy.
And tariffs are very useful, if exercised intelligently. Like Biden did with 60% tariffs on Chinese EV's. Which is what both US and EU need to do to prevent the highly subsidized Chinese EV sector from bankrupting all non-China EV manufacturing.
The RW noise machine did indeed engender a lot of the negativity about the recovery under Biden and is indeed trying to put lipstick on the Trump pig, but propaganda only goes so far. When your house is being foreclosed on and you can't make the payments on your F-150 because you're out of work at the factory and everything costs 25% more than it did six months ago, no amount of media spin is going to conceal how bad things are, and it might actually make it worse. That's what happened during the Great Recession under Bush (who'd previously enjoyed a similarly favorable propaganda environment) and it is I suspect what will happen again.
As for tariffs, I agree there are targeted applications where they can be useful, but the economically illiterate ideas that indiscriminate tariffs are paid by other countries, promote strong domestic industries, and help American businesses need to be staked through the heart.
The Ipsos poll last November of GOP voters found that 85% get some/most/all of their news from FOX News; and 80% of these strongly believed the major Trump/GOP bullshit talking points regarding the economy.
So 68% of Trump/GOP voters completely live in alternative facts fantasyland. Where Dems murder babies after birth, Haitian illegals eat people's dogs and cats, where crime/unemployment are at historic highs (instead of roughly the opposite), where we're already in a recession, and where inflation is just as high as it was 2-3 years earlier, and so on.
The most galling thing, is that if Trump had actually won in '20, FOX News would've done a 180' on inflation, running nonstop segments on how much *worse* inflation was in literally every single other nation. American voters would've been thanking their lucky stars the President's policies had kept consumer inflation the lowest by far in the entire world.
Would be nice if Democrats figured out a vision for the future and articulated a positive vision for America instead of just saying: "Trump sucks, we told you so. Vote for us."
I agree, but whatever works, if Trump causes a recession, Democrats should hammer him and the GOP relentlessly on the issue.
Please explain why during the 2020 presidential campaign Biden deceived U.S. voters by stating they he would serve only one term as president.
Could it be that he assumed Trump would no longer be a threat by 2024 and that he (Biden) could retire gracefully having done his bit to save the country? It could also be that every president (Trump included) thinks, towards the end of their first term, “Hey, wait, I’m just starting to get the hang of this; let me have another go!”
This comment proves very salient.
I don’t know, probably the same reason the manager of my NY team told me he was going to retire at 65 and is now 68, still there. Biden made a selfish and poor decision with disastrous consequences for his party and the country, but the decision wasn’t that surprising or unusual. Were you surprised?
I actually think people are wrong on this issue, including the Democrats. Biden still thinks he could have beaten Trump, and he might be right. He knew that most people don't pay attention to the election until a couple of months before it, and planned a blitzkrieg accordingly - but was bumped by the party.
My own feeling is that although they won't necessarily admit it, there are a significant number of voters who won't vote for a woman, and even more who won't vote for a black woman. Note that the two times Trump won were the first two times in history when one of the major parties nominated a woman. When he ran against a man, he lost.
No argument that racism and sexism factor into how people vote. On the other hand, President Obama in 2008 won the popular vote by the widest margin of any presidential election the past 28 years, and Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by more than 2%. Racism/sexism certainly a factor but not determinative.
Biden had average communication skills in his best days and clearly lost several steps between 2021 and 2024. We are arguing a hypothetical that can’t be proven either but in my view, it is wildly unrealistic to think Biden would have surged under the intense scrutiny of the last two months of the election. He would have skipped further debates and mostly hidden in the White House. Not likely to have been a winning strategy. And if, instead, he did another debate and campaigned aggressively, it would have been humiliating and embarrassing for everyone.
No. All politicians lie as part of their job description.
You don't have to root for it -- it's going to happen no matter what you want. When Trump and co. cut off so much funding from the government, which affects private companies as well, and kill off a good chunk of NIH and NSF funding, and force out 100s of thousands of Federal employees all across the country, it would take a miracle to maintain economic growth.
To win back the working class, the Democrats need to give up gender lunacy and racial wokeness. The working class hates it by broad margins.
Heck, I voted for Trump, but if you gave me a 1980's style Democrat today, I would probably be on board. My only concern would be abortion, but I could get over that if the party otherwise was truly committed to creating an economy -- not a bunch of handouts -- that put the working class back in the driver's seat of America.
Unfortunately, the the Democratic Party shows no indication of having figured that out.
It won’t matter, at least in the short term, if the GOP is blamed for a recession or more inflation. People care about identity/cultural issues until something happens to their pocketbooks.
I think you underestimate just how insane the Democratic party looks. Defunding the police 5 years ago hurt them with the urban poor and minorities (who look to police to keep their non-gated neighborhoods safe.) And "men can get pregnant" struck huge fractions of the non-college educated sect as batshit crazy (which it is.)
You're correct, the pocketbook does trump everything else politically... eventually. But if people get disenchanted with Trump and give the Dems another look, what will they see today? A party still obsessed with the made-up racial grievance and postmodernist sexual weirdness.
"A party still obsessed with the made-up racial grievance and postmodernist sexual weirdness."
Absolute and total hogwash. I challenge you to find even a single time when Harris or Walz campaigned on these issues.
The problem here is that a lot of working class people have been brainwashed into thinking that social media posts from a few fringe campus activists represent mainstream Democratic opinions. They don't, but it will apparently take getting clobbered with the damage to their livelihoods that Trumpist governance is going to create to make these working class GOP voters realize they've been hoodwinked.
I don't have time for this. Harris went all in on both these issues in 2020. Biden went all in for transgenderism throughout his presidency, literally beginning on the first day with the "Executive Order On Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government." He used his DOJ and DOE to twist Title VII and Title IX to force schools to put men on womens' sports teams for heavens sake. Even the average voter who pays little attention (my mother, who voted for Harris) is appalled at this.
Harris was given lots of opportunity for a Sister Souljah moment on this issue. That she never took it is telling.
Even if she had gone "all in" on them in 2020 (she didn't), she barely mentioned them at all in 2024. Biden signed a couple of EOs on the issue but 99.99% of his time and energy was spent on other, more consequential issues.
Face it. You (and a lot of other people) got snowed. You let a career con man trick you into thinking a handful of transgendered people playing high school lacrosse was the most consequential issue facing America, and now said con man is steering us into a severe recession that's going to cost thousands of lives, destroy our state capacity and relationships with allies, and severely damage the future of our country.
If I were you, I'd reflect on the monumentally poor judgment and lack of perspective I'd shown and try to make better decisions in the future. Or, you can just go on freaking about those ten trans athletes. Your choice.
While true, there are a lot of progressive Fringe group who say these things, and the GOP spin machine is very good at fanning those to their base.
"I think you underestimate just how insane the Democratic party looks."
You mistook the loudness of left-wing fringe lunatics for actual influence. While there was a lot of noise about defunding the police, there was little appetite to actually do it, and Biden even openly was against it.
Meanwhile, with the Republicans, the lunatics have been running the asylum for a while. The Tea Party, massive Congressional obstruction under Obama, electing a massive crook who blatantly lied, re-electing the same massive crook after he became even more openly crooked and incompetent, etc.
I think you underestimate just how insane the Republican party looks.
Easy there, dude. Trump won by like 2 percentage points; he didn’t even get 50% of the vote. If the Dems are half as crazy as you make them out to be then why the hell didn’t Trump win in a landslide? Kamala Harris was one of the lamest presidential candidates in my (admittedly short) lifetime and yet she came pretty close to cleaning Trump’s clock. Makes me think the average voter (who tbh doesn’t remember anything from 4 weeks ago, let alone 4 years) cares less about wokeness and more about inflation, immigration, and Biden’s stupid senile dash for a second term.
The best answer is that Trump is a narcissistic loon. Everyone knows that. And yet voters across the country and at almost every level of government broadly elected him and Republicans instead of the Democratic Party.
You talk about a flawed candidate? How crazy do your policies have to be to lose to Donald Trump?
Yes, Trump is a narcissistic loon, and the fact that you voted for him shows a lot about the hardcore MAGA electorate. The Democrats were arguably more woke in 2020 than they were in 2024, and yet somehow they managed to beat Trump (maybe because he let a goddamn pandemic run wild on his watch).
I get the feeling that no matter what Trump does, MAGA types like you will keep defending him. "Yeah, Trump is scamming the country with his crypto schemes and may force us into a recession, but can you believe the other guy?" What a shame.
You spend a lot of time and effort on Substack to show people how completely you have swallowed the culture war bait.
It’s a strange way to behave.
Greg,
Strange is only the half of it.
Tim
What's the other half?
And again, always the pivot to a personal attack.
Always the switch to a personal attack instead of debating the issue.
It's so lame.
The issue is the gullibility of people like you to obvious culture war bait.
You serve at least one useful purpose on here: serving as an example of the kind of voter who shows little to no awareness of the things most affecting their lives.
Here you are, weeks into the Trump presidency, ignoring the real life damage that he’s doing to the USA and the world, but going out of your way to show people that you believed everything you heard from right wing propagandists during 2024.
But see Gavin Newsom today:
>Newsom Splits With Democrats on Transgender Athletes: ‘It’s Deeply Unfair’
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/06/us/politics/gavin-newsom-transgender-sports-democrats.html
He cleverly said this a few days AFTER every plausible 2028 POTUS candidate in the Senate and House voted to keep boys in girls' sports.
Mark,
Gavin's switch is long overdue and hopefully sets a precedent for Democrats in the coming mid-terms. We will see. People need to think clearly about sex, gender, and liberty. Note that "boys" is not the correct term here, but arguing for trans women in sports is tantamount to voting Barry Bonds into the hall. That is not a hill I would die on.
Tim
"Boys" absolutely is the correct term. So-called "trans girls" are just boys who falsely claim to be girls.
It's was especially upsetting when the Democrats forced me to transition genders against my will. Losing my job and a good chunk of my savings might hurt, but at least Trump might let me transition back.
Well done - I like a bit of wry satire every once in a while!
No, you’re not likely to ever vote for a Democrat. Otherwise you’d have already voted for Obama. Your bio clearly indicates that you’re a religious person and you mentioned that abortion is an issue for you. 80s Democratic candidates lost in blowouts. Even Democrats don’t want 80s Democrats.
Most of them will not regret their votes.
They will remain susceptible to the sort of bullshit that induced them to vote for him in the first place.
The Democrats need to get their shit together and their house in order for a revival. Start coming up with and proposing bold ideas for the future, including modernization of government in important ways, not just defending the status quo. Stop heeding advocacy groups and track the center of the country while defending the rights and dignity of all Americans (calling for Dems to “end gender ideology” seems to be in practice largely a call for a return to state rationalized bigotry.)
100%
Nah fam, they'll just blame Biden, the Deep State, Elon... Literally anyone but Trump. They voted for this but they never expect anything negative to affect them personally.
The hardcore MAGA folks, yes, the average working class American who only tunes into politics once every four years, won’t.
I hope you are right...
Speaking of the Democrats: From my Euopean viewpoint I perceive much less Democrat activity than I‘d have presumed. Is this a perception issue or real lack of activity?
(And yes, I know Europe has its own issues to handle, and quite a lot of them).
Peter,
Democratic reforms are happening in the U.S., particularly at the state and intra-party levels, even though they might not be obvious from Europe. State to country comparisons might clarify that pushback. Conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and decades of legislative gridlock have fueled a more populist, autocratic strain in U.S. politics, enabled by a Senate structure that can empower a minority of voters.
Slavery’s legacy, as opposed to Europe’s colonial experience, also colors civil rights discussions in unique ways. Americans often pursue change institutionally (judicially or on a state level) rather than through mass protests—shaping a different political landscape than in Europe - which arguably are state level protests. What is different here is that we consider ourselves Americans more than Europeans consider themselves EU citizens.
Is that fair? Does it match your thinking?
Tim
I agree with your thoughts.
My comment aimed at a different aspect, though - I was wondering why I perceive less public pushback to irresponsible activities than I‘d have expected.
Could be either a asymmetric media coverage or maybe tactical/timing reasons …
I don't want to be too tinfoil hat here but: it is possible that at least some of this tariff whiplash is just insider trading or more precisely, market manipulation by Trump or those close to him?
We know very little about Trump's finances/conflicts of interests, other than the fact they are probably large. Might it be possible that on days where he puts tariffs in place, he has taken a large short position and cashes out when the market crashes? The reverse when he pulls back on tariffs; he just goes long and rides the market bump.
Since only he knows when and how tariffs are put in place and then repealed, and that there is a predictable and fairly quick market reaction to each move, it seems like easy money for a billionaire with few scruples and opaque financial disclosures.
Trump doesn’t need inside trading to profit from his stupid tariff jerking, he’s collecting $5 million fees for meetings at MarALago for the affected companies to plead for exemptions. And the stock market is down because the tariffs and uncertainty will cause companies to slow profits immediately and sharply, so the value of their stocks have fallen. It’s a nightmare, and all the people complaining about DOGE and Musk, while ignoring tariffs were all barking up the wrong tree.
Anti-wokeness seems pretty pro-stupid at this point.
All of this nonsense and belligerence coming from the US is going to impact trade for years to come. A lot harder to rebuild trust than it is to burn it all down.
We need a name for this glorious project of promoting self-reliant American backyard chicken farming.
"The Bigly Leap Forward", anyone?
"His inherent suspicion of other countries makes him want to be less dependent on them."
But isn't this essentially your logic with regarding industrial policy, Noah? I mean, if you have no suspicions or concerns about other countries, why should it matter whether you make or import your airplanes or semiconductors?
I agree that Trump's tariffs are mostly stupid (Mexico is at least debatable) however, he appears to be applying the same basic framework you are, just more vigorously than you would prefer. You're not exactly a Hayekian free-trader either, Noah.
My biggest complaint with Trump isn't the policy but the unpredictability. If he believes in tariffs, enact gradually increasing tariffs over the course of his Presidency on a scheduled basis: 5% per year maybe. It's the "will he or won't he" waffling that drives me nuts.
Note, anyone who hasn't read Art of the Deal really should. It lays out 40 year old Trump's negotiating tactics. There are two things I recall from the book: 1) be unpredictable; 2) always ask for 300% of what you want and whine every step of the way down. Both strategies have featured prominently in the last month.
It’s not “the same basic framework”. Noah’s idea is that we should trade with everyone, but we should specifically avoid being reliant on potential rivals for strategically important goods like semiconductors, electricity generation, and vehicles. Noah doesn’t mind buying toys and clothing from China, or even buying solar panels and batteries and computer chips from Germany, Canada, or Taiwan.
Whereas Trump thinks that even relying on Canada for toilet paper is a thing we should never do because the Canadians are so dastardly and untrustworthy and taking advantage of us by cooperating in trade.
Yeah, looking on his tariffs with Canada his most foolish thing is to tariff potash (Canada dominates the potash industry), to replace it by a FTA with Argentina (which has potash potential, but just opens for mining and would take several years to start exports!)
And even a FTA with Argentina is not guaranteed (even though Trump loves Milei, agribusiness lobbies in the US might not love the competition with grain, beef and wine from Argentina!)
I don't know Kenny... considering how hard it was to wipe my ass during COVID, I'm thinking toilet paper qualifies as a strategically important good.
Trump's philosophy as articulated in the Art of the Deal might work for negotiating two-bit real estate deals and building contracts in Atlantic City where you hold most of the leverage. That kind of thing is mostly what he's done in his life.
It does not work in complex, multi-lateral, multi-level international negotiations which feature multiple sets of stakeholders on both levels of the negotiation. It just makes you look like an unpredictable buffoon and needlessly poisons wells, making it impossible to reach lasting agreements. Trump has a junior high lunch table bully's grasp of negotiating strategy.
My recommendation for the book is purely to understand how Trump thinks with the goal of better understanding what he's doing.
I agree completely a strategy that works for one-off real estate deals is very suboptimal for the multi-round game theory world of international relations.
It's worse than "sub-optimal". It's downright self-destructive.
Trump is an empire-wrecking level of incompetent. Electing him is going to permanently change the course of this country's future for the extreme worse.
If your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail
Trump of course will never feel whatever the financial effects of what he’s doing bring on, any more than he actually feels the grievances or understands the problems of those who elected him because they thought he did. In fact he never really shared any of those grievances or problems, so there’s no reason for anyone to believe he could. Not that such realities have ever. diminished the fever that is Trumpism.
But his actions may have the effect most of the rest of us do want. which is that fever finally breaking. Hopefully that will happen before the patient (the United States) has suffered too much damage.
So the the Left wing, postmodernist, gender lunacy, racial wokeness fever has broken.
The right-wing Trump-personality cult fever is breaking.
Then what? That's a serious question. What takes the place of both of those? And that's the key; it must appeal to followers of both ideologies not just one of them.
The comparison is wholly untenable. Gender lunacy, as you call it, is simply recognition that human sexuality is a far more complex thing than the right wing would have it.
I’m not even going to try to define racial wokeness - like so much of the criticism from the right, it’s just buzz words thrown together against the wall to see if anything sticks.
Trumpism, on the other hand, is the single most anti-democratic and destructive force ever unleashed on us in our history. And it’s been unleashed by an American President who has repeatedly shown his utter disdain and disavowal of our electoral process, our Constitution, and the rule of law, and by an unelected machete wielder with an equal disdain and disavowal.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/03/06/treat-bearded-trans-colleagues-as-women-nhs-staff-told/
That's from the UK today.
https://i.abcnewsfe.com/a/59c7d2c9-3c25-4862-89a3-3f7c339bb6ca/lia-thomas-riley-gaines-ap-jt-240316_1710617704786_hpEmbed_3x2.jpg
That's from 4 years ago. The man on the right with the dick is really a woman.
If gender lunacy was simply what you describe, it wouldn't be a problem.
I don't see the problem that you're trying to illustrate with those links (though I can't see more than the headline of the first). Why is it a problem to call someone with a dick or a beard a woman if that's what they want to be called? I find it unrelatable and maybe a bit "weird", but why should it offend me?
None of this seems in any way related to federal governance. Aside from a very small number of NCAA athletes, I struggle to see how the Biden admin's limited support for trans related policies negatively impacted voters. And for what it's worth, I'd agree that their Title IX play around trans inclusion was ill advised - like I said, that doesn't seem like a matter for the federal government. Was it just bigotry or is there an actual negative impact that I'm missing?
Just bigotry and bullying.
I’d suggest you read, among other things, Jennifer Finny Boylan’s new book, Cleavage - Men, Women, and the Distance Between Us. You could use a wider perspective.
As a long-time athletic coach, I have some serious reservations about trans-males competing with women if they transitioned after puberty, but that is only one segment among many in this area. As with all such issues, making blanket laws is seldom the best avenue of approach.
You seem very concerned by what a potential Harris administration as a left wing Trojan horse could’ve done if elected. Can you articulate the worst case scenario in concrete terms of a Harris presidency?
What are the odds that someone in his circle is making money of long calls or puts? Like, they can't really be planning to do this every 30 days right? What is going to happen is that businesses are going to plan on just enacting policies as if the policies are going to go into effect because it is better to manage that way instead of wishing and hoping in my opinion.
I hope the fever is breaking, but the majority of people voted for this, and for the folks that have voted for him 2 or 3 times in a row by now, I think it's sunken cost fallacy. They really do believe that there is some master plan, and he is a genius. Or now, I see that they conveniently aren't following anything related to politics....
Just to be clear, only 49.8% of voters voted for this. That’s more than the number that voted against this, but there were a few percent of voters who voted for third parties. (Not to mention the people who voted in 2020 but didn’t feel like voting in 2024.)
I think Elon and DOGE are less about anti-woke and way more about the plain corruption. Cancel contracts with competitors of Musks companies and and then start replacing them with contracts with Musk's companies. If you object than you too can be fired. What is anti-woke about attacking the VA that overwhelmingly serves white men? About selling off 70% of government buildings. About chopping at at the IRS? About softening up Social Security for privatization? This all seem to be about creating opportunities for Muc sk himself and billionaire class cronies. To quote game of Thrones "chaos is a ladder" that apparently Musk and others intend to climb.
This what unites Trump and Musk, both are grabbing opportunities for self-enrichment openly with both hands. In fact the plan view corruption from which the chaos helps distract in the last six weeks has been stunning. Cryptocurrency reserve? Million dollar dinner tickets at Mar Largo? Pardons and prosecutions dropped against wealthy criminals after Trump meme coin investments? Threats to pay up to be inside the tent or face criminal investigation. And this is just a fraction. Truly breathtaking.
I don't think Trump has an ideology. He likes the Russians because they bailed him out when he was bankrupt: https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/21/how-russian-money-helped-save-trumps-business/ and because he likes dictators and autocrats and aspires to be one.
Tariffs he does because he can without Congress, and even some Republicans would oppose him. But tariffs, immigration, etc are issues he's seen work overseas to secure votes from folks left behind with similarly disaffected right wing leaders, and he's just winging it and lashing out at critics--especially intellectual ones who make him feel inferior. And race is a fairly constant dividing line in the U.S. so he's exploiting that as well as he did with Obama.
As a Canadian I have a different sense of what’s at play here. I’m an avid reader of many blogs on Substack and it seems to me that the number one issue I have with most of the opinions expressed is that they come from a place of treating Trump as a rational person. People still listen to what he says instead of watching what he does. And what he does is chaos. He loves it. When everything he does is destabilizing and bad for the economy the only conclusion one can make is that it’s on purpose. He wants to tank the economy so he and his billionaire cohort can swoop in and pick through the rubble for some bargains. The fate of the nation or its citizens are of no concern. This is exactly what our Prime Minister said when addressing the 25% tariffs, but about our economy not the US.
The present Prime Minister’s father once said about Canada and the US it was a bit like being a mouse living with an elephant so when Trump does as he does we’ve seen it before but now it’s not subtle cajoling it’s vulgar and in your face. I have nothing but good thoughts for your nation but I fear a citizenry that elected this man may find it very hard to rid themselves of him before not only national but global events may change the world irrevocably.
You are forgetting the other, even more important part of Trump's personal ideology, which is that he's a bully and narcissist who has a pathological desire for social dominance -- to invoke fear in his enemies and gain the adulation of his fans. Trump is motivated by grievance and vengeance, and tariffs are a baseball bat that he can swing around to make himself feel more important. Tariffs are something that many people fear, and they are a lever of power that are unconstrained by congress or the courts.
Also granting a tariff exemption is an “official act”, so even if he sells them off, he’s in the clear…
"America voted for a guy they thought would deregulate the economy and fix inflation — a modern-day Reagan. Instead they got a dime-store Mao"
Trump was very clear about his love for tariffs in the election cycle. Anyone that thought he was here to fix inflation just wasn't thinking very clearly.
There was also a major failure by the media to talk about Trump's policies rather than his character or threat to democracy. People wanted to punish Biden for his inflation, but if they didn't understand Trump would make it worse how come they weren't informed about it?