Politico doesn’t go there but it’s obvious:
Top White House and administration officials have been promising businesses, consumers and fellow Republicans more “certainty” on trade in the coming days, eager to calm skittish markets and avoid the stock market plunge that accompanied the White House’s initial tariff roll-outs.
But they have one problem: Donald J. Trump.
Just days out from Trump’s April 2 announcement of global tariffs, which he has hailed as “Liberation Day,” even those closest to the president — from Vice President JD Vance to his chief of staff Susie Wiles and his own Cabinet officials — have privately indicated that they’re unsure exactly what the boss will do, according to three people who have spoken with them…
“No one knows what the fuck is going on,” said one White House ally close to Trump’s inner circle, granted anonymity to speak freely. “What are they going to tariff? Who are they gonna tariff and at what rates? Like, the very basic questions haven’t been answered yet.”
When are people going to admit that he’s losing it? (To the extent that he ever had it, that is.) He probably isn’t remembering what he said from one day to the next and isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do. He is hanging on by his fingernails.
His team is concerned because he’s not paying any attention to economic warning signs that are all around us. But it’s also “because the president continues to throw curveballs at businesses — and even his own team.” What does that say?
Case in point: Wednesday’s decision to slap the auto industry with 25 percent tariffs. While expected in some fashion in the near future, the announcement came together so last minute that the White House wasn’t fully prepared and had to delay afternoon programming as they sought to finalize the plan, according to two people familiar with the roll-out.
The White House also didn’t brief industry stakeholders in the U.S. or abroad beforehand — though a White House official argued that if they were “smart” they would have known it was coming, since Trump himself issued a public warning.
Then he’s saying that he might not do it after all, but who knows?
“I may give a lot of countries breaks,” Trump said. “We might be even nicer than that.”
On Wednesday, he reiterated that potential reprieve, predicting to reporters that people will be “pleasantly surprised” by the “somewhat conservative” tariffs.
Look at how people try to find excuses for this erratic behavior:
“I think it would be a mistake to think next week all of a sudden we’re going to get a bunch of clarity,” said Tom Graff, chief investment officer at financial advisory firm Facet. “I’m sure they’re trying to reset with financial markets and build some certainty, but I don’t think the president is going to have a personality transplant.”
“I think he wants to keep his options open,” Graff added.
Bullshit. There’s no point to any of it. I won’t even quote what the White House sycophants are saying. You can only imagine.
Tell me this isn’t a man struggling with dementia:
Part of the uncertainty stems from the president seeming to undermine his own team at times. After Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trump economic adviser Kevin Hassett said in recent weeks that only about 10 or 15 countries — or the “dirty 15,” as Bessent put it — would face reciprocal tariffs, Trump said Wednesday that actually every country will be hit with a tariff…
Indeed, Trump has continued to shift the scope, targets and timeline of his tariffs at a whiplash-inducing pace. The duties he promised, pre-inauguration, to levy on Canada and Mexico his first day in office shifted to Feb. 1, then Feb. 4, then March 4, before being largely rolled back until April 2. There is little clarity about what parts of those tariffs — which could hit more than $1 trillion worth of trade — will go into effect next week.
The size of the so-called reciprocal tariffs, which the administration says it’s calculating for individual trading partners based on their treatment of U.S. imports, could also shift. Administration officials have indicated to foreign diplomats that those duties are meant to be a starting point for negotiations with other countries, meaning American companies may not know what if any tariffs will stick.
Trump also threatened to impose tariffs April 2 on various critical industries, including pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, copper and lumber, before indicating in recent days that those tariffs are likely to be delayed.
The “planning” is in total chaos. Any country that wants to avoid these inane tariffs has no idea if they’re coming or what they might be although Lutnick has said he’d try to give them a “heads up” if he can.
Apparently, the team is divided and each side is trying to influence the addled president although that probably won’t make any difference. Bessent, Wiles and Vance have all tried to get him to narrow the tariffs and make a final decision (despite surprising Wall St with their public support for whatever Trump does) but he doesn’t listen.
And then there are the true blues:
On the other hand, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Navarro are said to be encouraging Trump’s long-standing tariff fixation.
The divisions have caused tensions. While Navarro is a genuine tariff believer, Lutnick — who has a close relationship with Trump and enjoys influence that others in the Cabinet do not, as of yet — is widely seen as supporting whatever Trump wants to ingratiate himself with the president, a dynamic that has infuriated others in the administration.
“He goes into the Oval and tells the president whatever he wants to hear,” said the first White House ally, who called Lutnick a “fucking nightmare” and argued he does so without consideration of the economic consequences.
Republicans are worried:
“If tariffs did have an inflationary impact — or an impact on interest rates that caused inflation and the economy moved toward a recession — that would be a very bad thing in my judgement,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told POLITICO, though he acknowledged a skilled rollout could work. “It would turn the Trump presidency from a four year term into a two year term, because we’d lose in the midterms.”
Ya think? The stubborn old man doesn’t hear any of that because he’s ignorant, has always believed his own hype and is losing his grip all at the same time:
The problem Trump’s own advisers and Hill Republicans face is that the president doesn’t share their alarm. He’s long believed that other countries are cheating America and that tariffs will usher in a new period of economic growth — economists’ warnings be damned. While many Hill Republicans have sought to justify his tariff obsession by chalking it up to a negotiating tactic, the reality is Trump really believes in the protectionist policies pushed by aides like Navarro, the longtime trade adviser whom Republicans almost universally distrust. The president also believes that his tariffs are popular with voters.
That’s because he’s not all there. They know it too, they just won’t admit it. He’s in his own world:
“The president isn’t looking at it like they are,” said one of the people close to Trump’s inner circle of the president’s advisers.“For [him], if the economy tanks, then fine, the economy tanks — because the president truly believes that it will rebound and the countries will give in because they can’t withstand the pressure from the U.S.”
As for political blowback, this person continued: “No. 1, the president is not running for reelection — so where this may have been a political concern in his first term, it’s not a political concern now. … And No. 2, we’re probably gonna lose the House in the midterms.”
Yes, eventually the economy will rebound. It always does in the long run. But as J.K. Galbraith famously said, “in the long run we’ll all be dead.”
I love this:
It’s unclear how candid Trump’s advisers have been to the president about their fears. One White House ally on the outside close to Trump’s team said even his most senior advisers abhor telling Trump what he doesn’t want to hear — but another argued that the president simply isn’t internalizing the warnings.
“I don’t think it’s like no one wants to tell Trump the bad, the hard news,” said one of the outside allies mentioned above. “I think people have tried to have a conversation with him, and he’s dead set on it. He’s a true believer.”
That’s because he’s not all there. It’s obvious in a million different ways. And they are all now in protective mode, far beyond anything we saw with Biden who was just showing normal elderly decline, nothing like this.
They say that people’s character traits often become more pronounced when dementia sets in. They can also become more stubborn, largely because they find themselves often confused and disoriented so they exert whatever power they have over others to reassure themselves that they’re still in control. And yes, in Trump’s case, he’s completely in old man YOLO mode, doing whatever he wants determined to prove that he’s always been right about everything. I hesitate to think what he’s going to do if and when reality blows up in his face.
When is the media going to start looking at this seriously?