With the breadth of the Trump Revolution spread across Washington in recent weeks, its most decisive feature is the burning first-class, ultimately recklessness. The cost of this approach is now clear.
Administration officials know that when President Trump announces his long-announced “countdown” tariffs, the market will dive and other countries will retaliate. But when oppressed, several senior officials admitted that they only spent a few days thinking about the possible second-order impact of the economic earthquake.
And officials have not described the strategies to manage the global complexity system after the initial shock decline, besides endless threats and negotiations between the world's largest economy and everyone else.
With the seemingly unmanaged upgrade of China, the world's second largest economy, is also the only superpower that can challenge the United States economically, technologically and militarily. According to the United States and China, there was no substantive dialogue between Mr. Trump and Chinese top leader Xi Jinping or senior aides before the country was trapped in a trade war.
Last Wednesday, Mr. Trump hurriedly designed the formula to figure out the tax rate of all Chinese goods in the country at 34%, from auto parts to iPhones to Walmart and Amazon apps on most of the content.
It is predictable that when Xi Jinping matched the number, Mr. Trump sent him a final atum to reverse the decision within 24 hours – waving red flags in front of the leader who never seemed to want to retreat to Washington. By Wednesday morning, tariffs should reach 104%, with no significant downgrade strategy.
If Mr. Trump does launch a trade war with China, he shouldn't seek too much help from traditional American allies (Japan, South Korea or the EU), who, together with the United States, account for nearly half of the world economy. They were all equally shocked, and although everyone was negotiating with Mr. Trump, they didn't seem to be in the mood to help him manage China.
“Donald Trump launched a global economic war,” John Lipsky, an economist at the Atlantic Commission, wrote Tuesday. “That's why it's different from the economic crisis before this century – if the situation starts to collapse, no one will come to save the global economy.”
The global trade system is just an example of the Trump administration breaking apart, just revealing that it has no plans for how to replace it.
State Department officials know that eliminating the U.S. International Development Agency (US Prime Minister’s Aid Agency) will inevitably give life. But when the devastating earthquake struck central Myanmar late last month and buildings in Bangkok were demolished, officials scrambled to provide some help – only to discover the aid network in locations, as well as the networks where people and aircraft distribute it.
After removing the system that had previously responded to major disasters, they settled and dispatched an investigation team of three employees to examine the wreckage and make recommendations. Even though they stood in the ruins of Mandalay, Myanmar, the three were fired from their jobs in an attempt to restore the U.S. Department of Efficiency (actually no department at all).
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was unapologetic for the insignificant reaction of the U.S. when talking to reporters on Friday: “There are many other wealthy countries that should also be invested and helped,” he said. “We will continue to play our role, but it will be balanced with all the other interests we have as a nation.”
Likewise, there are no plans to retrieve a Maryland man who was wrongly deported to the infamous and dangerous El Salvador prison, a move a judge called the “full law” and is expected to take the issue in the coming days. The Justice Department attorney in the case was sent for administrative leave, apparently to admit that the man should never be sent to prison.
With the impact of his policies knocking on the door, Mr. Trump seems to have not wavered. In recent days, he shrugged, losing $5 trillion in the value of the U.S. market. “Sometimes you have to take medication to fix something,” he said on Air Force One Sunday night.
In public, Trump’s aides often conflict with each other, even for the reasons for imposing tariffs. Peter Navarro is the most passionate defender of tariffs, who has repeatedly described it as a new permanent feature of the U.S. economic defense.
“This is not a negotiation,” he wrote in the Financial Times. “For the United States, it is a national emergency caused by the trade deficit caused by the manipulation of the system.”
Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Navarro proposed a case where tariffs would become the main source of government revenue, just like in the 1890s, before income tax was imposed. (One of the skeptics Mr. Navarro analyzed was Elon Musk, who led the government's efficiency department and was the richest man in the world. He called Mr. Navarro a “real idiot” and “better than a bag of bricks” on social media.)
But if you listen to Scott Bessent, the secretary of Cut, he looks painful because he has to defend his tariff strategy, import tax is a negotiation tool. He said on Monday that he is in talks with Japan, the world's third economy and the most critical ally of the United States. But it is not clear that negotiations are about tariffs, non-Adalif barriers or geopolitical.
(Obviously, there are exemptions for tariffs in terms of gaining geopolitical advantages. Kevin Hassett, one of Mr. Trump’s top economic advisers, told ABC on Sunday: “Obviously there is an ongoing negotiation with Russia and Ukraine, and I don’t think the president is in Russia’s second issue, Uksia’s second issue; pay 10%.)
Mr. Trump has never been fixed strategically, and he declares all interpretations that are effective for the purposes of tariffs. “They can be both true. There may be permanent tariffs, and negotiations can be made because in addition to tariffs, we need something.”
At least so far, what is missing is a vision for the future.
Mr. Trump’s aides insist that the speed at which they work is a characteristic of the system, not a mistake. Mr. Musk insists that he acts too slowly, and the bureaucracy will dig out and will never be eliminated. “No one will be fighting a thousand,” he said at the White House in February. “We will make mistakes. But we will act quickly to correct any mistakes.” He cited some assistance to restore the Ebola virus and retraining workers at the National Nuclear Safety Administration, which oversees nuclear weapons.
But it is impossible to walk through the empty corridors of the Ronald Reagan Building – the United States Agency for International Development, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Woodrow Wilson International Scholar Center are all demanded by the task of firing many workers – and there is no clear plan for almost no remaining work. The U.S. Agency for International Development’s door is locked; the EPA has stopped collecting some critical data. No one knows what is happening in the Cold War Archives at the Wilson Center, but its scholars are largely gone. At the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, surveillance of Russian and Chinese malware has been obtained backseat to avoid layoffs.
The answer is a defensive defense when the question is whether it is beyond the budget line and takes into account what happens when capabilities and expertise disappear. The Department of Health and Human Services has canceled billions of dollars in surveillance to monitor Covid-19 and improve response to future virus outbreaks. When asked, the department said: “The pandemic of co-19 is over and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer funds to deal with the non-existent pandemic that Americans continued to move forward a few years ago.”
All of this shows that a failure to look around, which is nothing new in the US presidency. Herbert Hoover signed Smoot-Hawley tariffs in June 1930, thinking they would help create jobs and then go fishing. Instead, they accelerated the Great Depression.
The White House insists that the result will be the opposite. It's a huge bet, not only Mr. Trump's presidency, but the fate of the global economy depends on. And no one can predict the lowest point in the market, or where to upgrade China.
“The speed and chaos surrounding the introduction of President Trump’s policies has caused extraordinary damage to the global economy; no one lives to witness self-inducing volatility on this scale,” Ian Bremmer, founder of consulting firm Eurasia Group, wrote this week.
He noted that at the beginning of this year, the United States had the strongest economic status in any of the seven countries.
Now, he concluded: “President Trump has become the main disgusted person.”
