Author: digby

Brian Beutler’s theory on why Trump loves tariffs so much is as good as anything I’ve heard. It certainly fits with my own observations of what makes Trump tick:

They’re extremely stupid. They’re so dumb they have people genuinely wondering if Trump has some devious ulterior motive for being so destructive. Is he trying to wreck the economy so he and his billionaire buddies can buy up its valuables in a fire sale? Did Vladimir Putin tell him this would be a good idea? I guess I wouldn’t rule anything out, but I suspect the answer is much dumber. Trump likes to set up situations where he can snap his fingers and things change, it makes him feel powerful. It makes it so people who hold him in contempt nevertheless have to kiss his ring. He likes anything that gives him kind of leverage. He wants to be an autocrat, and this advances that goal, at least insofar as it doesn’t crater the economy and ignite a major popular and elite backlash.

But he’s also been obsessed with tariffs since way before he had real designs on the presidency. At the risk of peering into a deranged mind, my “too dumb to be true, but probably is” hypothesis is that he’s obsessed with the Gilded Age (though he may not even know the term, or that it’s derogatory) because that’s when they built all these ornate mansions and estates. When he says ahistorical nonsense, like that the U.S. was never richer than under William McKinley, I think he’s confused about what “national prosperity” means. The robber barons had all the money and built lavish properties, ergo the country was “rich.”

He lives in Mar-a-Lago, which was built by Marjorie Merriweather Post in the 1920s. And while she, as heiress to the Post Cereal fortune, was not a “robber baron” in the traditional sense of the word, that’s the vibe he likes. It’s what you’d expect in a “rich country.” He’s a bit like a townie who starts to talk, dress, and act like a mobster after watching The Godfather, because the Corleones seemed so strong, and had so much money. Not an uncommon interpretation of the movie, particularly among unthinking men! But the point is that it misses the point. And Trump isn’t playing dress-up. He’s causing immense damage to the world.

I do think this is part of it. He loves the bling. Look what he’s doing to the White House.

Bleccch…

Beutler points out the one “silver lining” if you want to call it that:

Politically, none of this would be possible without Republican obeisance. This is not how the law giving presidents immense discretion over tariffs was intended to function, and they could change it tomorrow, with veto-proof majorities. But they won’t, at least not until the pain becomes chronic and severe. This is one of the most straightforward cases I can recall where members of Congress will truly own and foot the bill for their president’s recklessness—they have no good answer for the public other than “we have to trust the president,” when they know full well he’s not to be trusted. If there’s a silver lining here, it’ll be watching bad, craven people squirm.

They are literally saying “trust Trump, he’s a genius.” They’re placing a very big bet that his luck will hold and this won’t be as bad as it seems. In fairness, he has managed to slither out of every jam in his life so they’re just letting it ride. But this one is the biggest crazy risk he’s ever taken and they are idiots for going along with it.

After spending years attacking Biden for inflation, Fox Business news now makes it sound like Inflation is perfectly fine amidst Trump's tariffs.

“Listen it’s a roller coaster. You only get hurt if you jump off amid the ride. If you have to pull back from your vacation this year… pic.twitter.com/MZnpPmSs8C

— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) April 2, 2025

“Listen it’s a roller coaster. You only get hurt if you jump off amid the ride. If you have to pull back from your vacation this year because times are a little tighter, fine. Save, plan and you can’t just be like ‘the sky is falling’ looking at the headlines every day to decide how I’m going to live life.”

Lutnick: "Let Donald Trump run the global economy. He's knows what he's doing. He's been talking about it for 35 years. You gotta trust Donald Trump in the White House … it's broken. Let him fix it … Let Donald Trump fix the American economy."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-04-03T15:34:19.711Z

He’s doing a great job:

A surge in federal government job cuts contributed to a near record-setting pace for announced layoffs in March, exceeded only by when the country shut down in 2020 for the Covid pandemic, according to a report Thursday from job placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

Furloughs in the federal government totaled 216,215 for the month, part of a total 275,240 reductions overall in the labor force. Some 280,253 layoffs across 27 agencies in the past two months have been linked to the Elon Musk-led so-called Department of Government Efficiency and its efforts to pare down the federal workforce.

The monthly total was surpassed only by April and May of 2020 in the early days of the pandemic when employers announced combined reductions of more than 1 million, according to Challenger records going back to 1989. It also was the highest March on record.

The year-to-date tally for federal government announced layoffs represents a 672% increase from the same period in 2024, according to Challenger.

This can’t be happening. Laura Loomer?????

Several members of President Trump’s embattled National Security Council have been fired, a U.S. official and a second source familiar told Axios on Thursday.

The firings come a day after conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer visited the Oval Office and pressed Trump to fire specific NSC staffers. Axios has not confirmed whether the firings were directly linked to that incident, but the source familiar said they were “being labeled as an anti-neocon move.”

The U.S. official said Loomer was furious that “neocons” had “slipped through” the vetting process for administration jobs, referring to hawkish foreign policy views commonly associated with the Bush administration.

• “She went to the White House yesterday and presented them with her research and evidence,” the official said. The NYT first reported on Loomer’s visit. The official suspected that the firings were linked to Loomer’s visit but was not certain.
• The U.S. official named two senior NSC members who had been fired, and said it was shaping up to be a “bloodbath.” Axios is seeking additional confirmation before naming those people.
• The source familiar said several people were fired, including senior directors. An NSC spokesperson declined to comment.

He’s having a total meltdown.

Will anyone resign? Will any GOP Senator or Rep. even say anything?

YouGov Poll 3/28-4/1:

I think the scariest result here is that 52% of the American people want to designate large-scale fentanyl trafficking as a weapon of mass destruction. WTF???

Other than that, most people seem to be reasonably sane. Too bad about the government that 49% of them voted for:

They really hate the Trump agenda. I wonder if they know that?

James Fallows has written a great post today about the tariffs. The first part is all about what constitutes good and bad tariffs and when they are useful. You should read it. Then he goes into the history of tariffs in the U.S.

I think it’s useful to think of them in great waves:

1. The founding. This is the Hamilton era until after the Civil War. The US as a whole “needed” tariffs to develop its industries against more mature and efficient British and European competitors. That is what Hamilton asked for, and got.
   
   From then through the Civil War, the tariff was a hugely divisive issue, second in national political importance only to slavery itself. The lines of division largely paralleled those of slavery: The industrialized North generally favored tariffs, to promote its industries. The agricultural and plantation-based South generally opposed them, since tariffs raised their costs but did not “protect” their output. (The Brits weren’t competing with cotton from Mississippi or Alabama.)
   
2. Reconstruction through McKinley. I doubt that Donald Trump could pick a photo of a young William McKinley (below) out of a lineup, or recite anything about his life, his Civil War record, or his death. But Trump has seized upon the idea that McKinley’s tariffs were the greatest thing about him, “the most beautiful word in the dictionary.”
   
   According to most people other than Trump, the McKinley-era tariffs (especially the main act of 1890, which raised the average tariff on imports to 50% !!!) were one more part of Gilded Age expansion-and-corruption. Useful to favored industries. Not useful to the country as a whole. Like many of today’s policies, they enriched the rich, and raised prices for everyone else.
   
3. Bring on Smoot-Hawley. Enough said. Let’s skip through the worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s and all it wrought. No one who has looked into Smoot-Hawley has said, “Let’s do that again!” Until today.
   
4. The Cold-War Era and GATT. In its role as Western World hegemon after World War II, the US was aware of two trading realities. One was that on an “open competition” basis its industries would easily out-compete those in practically any other country. So it could afford to lower tariffs. The other is that it was in Western and US interests to have industries and economies develop in the non-Soviet world. Thus it should lower tariffs, and take other measures to help potentially allied countries to recover. (GATT is General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.)
   
5. Clinton, WTO, and NAFTA. In the 1990s, Bill Clinton’s administration lowered tariffs and trade barriers across the board. Bringing China into the World Trade Organization. Connecting the US, Canadian, and Mexican economies through NAFTA. Judge it a success or failure as you will. For now I’m just noting it as an era.
   
6. Biden and the return of ‘Industrial Policy.’ This is the era that I think will get more attention in the long run, but that in the by-wash of Biden’s re-election catastrophe is under-appreciated now.
   
   Biden mostly kept the Trump I-era tariffs against China. But unlike Trump, I or II, he connected them to an “industrial policy” for long-term development of US alternatives. The focus was on exactly the areas most “left-behind” and hollowed-out by Chinese and other competition from Clinton-era changes. (As William Janeway described here.) I’ll have more references about the Biden policies below. For the moment I’m mentioning them as prelude to phase 7, which we’re just now entering.
   
7. Insane Clown Posse: Trump at the helm. Effective tariffs are long-term. They are precise, rather than splatter-shot. They come from the left brain (rational) rather than the right brain (impulse). They take careful account of larger strategic interests—for example, with the US’s neighbors, Canada and Mexico. They are informed by thinking, “If we do this, will the other side do that?” They show the same care a responsible general, squadron commander, or police chief would use.
   
   What we appear to have, instead, from Trump is trade-policy-as-MAGA-rally. He is mad and wants to flex. He hasn’t thought through to what might happen next.

This is where we stand today. It’s “Blind Into Baghdad” without the Humvees. And it will do at least as much damage.

I would just amend that to say that Trump can’t think through what will happen next. He lives in a delusional fog, ignorant of anything but his base instincts and the people around him are either deluded as well, thinking that he’s a magic man, or they see opportunities in his madness.

Fallows also shared some very useful links. We might as well dive in. It looks like we’re in for a long trip:

Here are a number of articles, reports, books, and other cites I have found worthwhile.

From the WSJ (!), Phil Gramm (!!) and Donald Boudreaux on why the person most upset by Trump’s incoherent trade policy would be … the sainted William McKinley himself.

From seven years ago, a Planet Money “brief history of tariffs.”

From two days ago, a PBS NewsHour Paul Solman assessment of how tariffs would affect US manufacturing.

From the WaPo this week, a Heather Long column on how tariffs could bring back the 1970s nightmare of “stagflation.”

From Brookings this year, a David Wessel and Elijah Asdourian an explainer on how tariffs work—and don’t.

From Robert Litan this week, a big-picture perspective on how Trump’s impulses match the larger history of trade.

From Foreign Affairs last month, Douglas Irwin and Chad Bown on why tariffs will backfire not just for the country as a whole but also for Trump’s own goals (to the extent they are knowable).

From Henry Farrell, an assessment of the tensions in right-wing politics revealed by the tariff proposals.

From Barron’s this week, Matt Peterson on how Trump’s tariffs may move the US into “developing country” status.

From Foreign Affairs this week, Michael Froman on how incoherent US trade policy has put China in the driver’s seat.

BARTIROMO: Are we now gonna see egg prices move back higher because of the tariffs?

BROOKE ROLLINS: All to be determined. The president has said that we'll have a little bit of uncertainty in the coming weeks, perhaps a month or two. I'm not gonna sit here and say everything is… pic.twitter.com/8PU1oIqpKX

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 3, 2025

BARTIROMO: Are we now gonna see egg prices move back higher because of the tariffs?

BROOKE ROLLINS: All to be determined. The president has said that we’ll have a little bit of uncertainty in the coming weeks, perhaps a month or two. I’m not gonna sit here and say everything is gonna be perfect and the prices are gonna come down tomorrow because this is an uncertain time, but that is the president’s genius in all this … God bless him.

Bartiromo, formerly known as “the money honey” knows very well what’s going on. Brooke Rollins is the Secretary of Agriculture.

The markets crashing is all part of Trump’s genius plan. Here’s more of that Wharton School genius:

It didn’t take long before someone cracked the code on how the White House decided to overturn the global trade order. 

The White House claimed to base its decision on tariff rates and nontariff barriers, but economic journalist James Surowiecki reckons it was all just a back-of-the-envelope calculation. “Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country’s exports to us,” the former financial columnist for The New Yorker posted on X. “What extraordinary nonsense this is.”

That approach meant Trump and his advisers simply took the U.S. trade deficit with the European Union — $235.6 billion in 2024 — and divided it by the bloc’s exports to the U.S., which totaled $605.8 billion. 

The result was 39 percent, which the administration interpreted as the “unfair” trade advantage the EU holds over the U.S. From there, the White House proposed a 20 percent tariff, framing it as a corrective measure to level the playing field.

Trump, speaking in the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday, said he was being “kind” by cutting the tariff rate almost in half.

[…]

The White House responded with a formula featuring Greek letters and six research references to underscore the credibility of its momentous economic decision. Incidentally, that formula describes the same calculation detailed by Surowiecki in his analysis.

Washington claimed its reciprocal tariffs, masterminded by the Council of Economic Advisers, were based on a formula accounting for trade barriers, import elasticities and tariff pass-through rates — aiming to set tariffs high enough to eliminate bilateral trade deficits. It also considered value-added tax as a trade barrier — even though this is paid on products and services sold in a country regardless of where the company selling them is from.

The White House’s calculated figure of 39 percent is more than 10 times higher than the actual average, trade-weighted tariff charged by the EU of 2.7 percent, according to the World Trade Organization.

What’s Trump doing today as the world implodes?

Josh Marshall wrote this on Bluesky and I think it explains what’s going on with HHS as well as I’ve seen it anywhere:

It’s getting a lot of attn today. But even before today most of the country had very little idea of what has happened at NIH or through it the entire ecosystem of biomedical research in the US. Simply put, Musk, Kennedy & Trump exploded a bomb right in the middle of cancer cure research in the US.

On purpose. For many cancers, research has been put back years or decades. Alzheimers treatment and cure research similar story. If you know people who are survivors of these diseases and fear recurrence or have genetic dispositions or are just like everyone else and know they are liable to these and other diseases potential cures are now less likely to be there when you need them. You have to ask: what is the goal when you pull the plug on the whole ecosystem of cancer cure research? What’s the agenda? The answers are so dark and twisted most people struggle to believe it could be real.

But it is real. And it’s happened so quickly, most of the country doesn’t know it yet. Indeed, I got some key indications over the weekend that even people in the biomedical research world outside of NIH don’t get yet what’s happened. So the bomb has gone off but most people don’t realize it yet. It’s like Bobby Kennedy and Elon and Trump just drove a big semi full of fertilizer Tim McVeigh-style up in front of the national labs and detonated it.

The prospect of more life saving cures and treatments already got much bleaker. If you think you or a loved one might one day get one of these cancers, or Alzheimers, or various other dread diseases 10, 20, 30 years from now your chances have already dimmed because of what’s happened just in the last two months.

And now they’ve decided to up the pace and make it far worse because of a mix of difficult to fully comprehend pathological motives tied to political extremism, belief that AI will supplant medical research & that destroying the current research world will add to their wealth and political power and cement their hold over what was the American republic.

It will take a determined, smart, relentless and implacable counterattack to begin to undo the damage.

There are so many atrocities coming from this administration that it’s hard to decide the worst of it. But when it comes to the most harm to the most people in short, medium and long term, I think this might be it. The U.S. has been one of the most prolific leaders in medical research for a very long time and we’re giving it up because Trump wanted to cover up his support for vaccines during the pandemic — and stick it to the people who made him feel stupid about it. No one can tell him anything so he’s letting Bobby Jr play. Many people will die needlessly.

Let’s hope that we can put this Humpty Dumpty together again but the damage is already severe and it will take a massive effort. It’s heartbreaking.

More fascist fashion.That’s not Kristi Noem. It’s the new US Attorney nominee Alina Habba, former parking lot lawyer and Trump confidante.

It’s as close as they can get to their private bdsm fantasy.

The 25% tariff on all foreign made cars goes into effect at midnight. Aaaand:

Trump's pulling out a giant board to list the tariffs he's charging today. Looks like 34% China, 20% EU, 46% Vietnam, 32% Taiwan, 24% Japan, 26% India, 25% South Korea, 36% Thailand, 31% Switzerland, 49% Cambodia. Most other countries hid by podium, he's counting them off 1 by 1.

— Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 (@josephpolitano.bsky.social) 2025-04-02T20:30:00.306Z

He almost certainly just made those numbers up in his head. There’s no rationale for any of it. He simply doesn’t understand what tariffs are, what trade is and why nations use them. He thinks it’s unfair that any foreign country would charge a higher aggregate tariff on U.S. goods than the U.S. charges them. That’s not how this works. It’s not how any of this works.

It would have been really great if he’d read a history book at some point:

“From 1789 to 1913, we were a tariff-backed nation and the US was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been … then in 1913, for reason unknown to mankind, they established the income tax.”

He really believes that “America” was wealthier before the 20th century. Can he honestly be that fucking dumb? Can anyone?

Paul Krugman published this earlier before the tariff announcement and he is 100% right:

From Apocalypse Now:

Willard: They told me that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound.

Kurtz: Are my methods unsound?

Willard: I don’t see any method at all, sir.

[…]

I’m not saying that the Trump team’s thinking is unsound. I don’t see any thinking at all.

I don’t know how many people realize that the administration’s case for tariffs is completely incoherent, that it has not one but two major internal contradictions.

Here’s the story: Trumpers are claiming that tariffs

1. Won’t increase prices, because foreign producers will absorb the cost

2. Will cause a large shift in U.S. demand away from imports to domestic production

3. Will raise huge amounts of revenue

If you think about it for a minute, you realize that (1) is inconsistent with (2): If prices of imports don’t rise, why would consumers switch to domestically produced goods? At the same time, (2) is inconsistent with (3): If imports drop a lot, tariffs won’t raise a lot of money, because there won’t be much to tax.

So the public story about tariffs doesn’t make any sense. And Trump’s rants about tariffs go beyond nonsense. Here’s one of the latest:

Does he really believe that Canada is a major source of fentanyl? Worse, does he believe that fentanyl smugglers pay tariffs?

But is it all a cover for the real, probably sinister agenda of Trump’s tariff push?

No. There isn’t any secret agenda, devised by people who know that the public story is nonsense. How do I know that? Because who, exactly, do you think is devising this secret agenda?

As he goes on to point out, Trump’s advisers are all hacks and yes-men. There are no grown-ups.

This is all Trump’s whim, ungoverned by any expertise or any sense of responsibility. He believes his hype and all the rest of his sycophants and henchmen are just going along for the ride — and that’s assuming they know this is lunacy in the first place.

As Krugman puts it:

This is all about Trump’s gut feelings. A White House official told Politico that he likes the “shock and awe,” and that

Each country needs to panic and call. … Trump wants to hear you grovel and say you’ll cut a deal.

Since most of our trading partners aren’t in a groveling mood, trade war seems inevitable.

I’ll update this once the “big announcement” happens.