Donald Trump had a plan. It was not a good plan, or even a plausible one. But it was, at least, a coherent plan: By imposing large trade barriers on the entire world, he would create an incentive for American business to manufacture and grow all the goods the country previously imported.
Whatever chance this plan had to succeed is already over.
The key to making it work was to convince businesses that the new arrangement is durable. Nobody is going to invest in building new factories in the United States to create goods that until last week could be imported more cheaply unless they’re certain that the tariffs making the domestic version more competitive will stay in place. (They’re probably not going to do it anyway, in part because they don’t know who will be president in four years, but the point is that confidence in durable tariffs is a necessary condition.)
But not everybody got the idea. Eric Trump tweeted, “I wouldn’t want to be the last country that tries to negotiate a trade deal with @realDonaldTrump. The first to negotiate will win - the last will absolutely lose.”
Eric’s father apparently didn’t get the memo either. Asked by reporters whether he planned to negotiate the tariff rates, the president said, “The tariffs give us great power to negotiate. They always have.”
Someone seems to have then told Trump that this stance would paralyze business investment, because he reversed course immediately, writing on Truth Social, “TO THE MANY INVESTORS COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES AND INVESTING MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF MONEY, MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE.”
However, there is a principle at work here called “No backsies.” Once you’ve said you might negotiate the tariffs, nobody is going to believe you when you change your mind and say you’ll never negotiate.
How can you botch something that was ireetrievably fucked up from the start? It’d be like defacing a teratoma.
Too bad he can’t botch eating a hamberder. Or stepping out of the shower without falling. Or playing Russian roulette and not losing. There are at least 593 other things he could botch that would do the world much more service.
You think the guy who wears diapers so he can shit himself on purpose, showers?
Touché. Maybe he can shit himself to death
He hasn’t botched the tariffs - his goal is to weaken the US as evident by the outcome of every fucking decision he makes. And to that end, he’s accomplished his mission.
Stop treating him like a village idiot who’s trying to run our country and failing; and start treating him like a domestic enemy to the US who’s trying to destroy our country and succeeding.
‘Botched’ is what happened when that rally shooter missed, and what actively happens every time someone who swore the Oath of Office/Enlistment/Commissioned Officers is within arm’s reach of that traitor and fails to uphold their obligation to defend our constitution from all domestic threats.
He is not only attacking the US, he wants to breakup democracies world wide and through causing international crisis and turmoil, push all countries into becoming authoritarian regimes, controlled by oligarchs and one-party systems.
That is the actual goal, and he is doing that while trying to maintain plausible deniability, by staging himself as an incompetent and incoherent buffoon.
And even if he is a real buffoon and doesn’t understand the end goal, he has a lot of more intelligent antidemocratic advisors around him that do. This is not coming out of nowhere.
I think he’s just an egotistical POS who wants to be remembered for something huge, like taking Greenland.
He wants to stand out among other former presidents but he’s too stupid to figure out how to do that while also improving America.
I don’t think Trump’s plan had anything at all to do with helping America. The tariffs are about wielding power, making threats, creating fear and division, etc.
Trump can pull the tariffs away at a time of his choosing to curry good-favour when he needs it. And since he has that control, and knows the broad effect on stock-prices, he can also use it as a self-enrichment exercise too.
Yeah, it’s just a shakedown. The authoritarian countries will just outright bribe him to get the tariffs dropped, democracies are in a bit of a pickle because they typically can’t do that, so they’ll have to be more creative. We’ve been through this before.
Very true.
This is why EUs response to this is making me sick. Just grow a fucking pair already. They’re tiptoeing around slamming back with massive tariffs, basically confirming to trump that he should push harder to get whatever he wants.
China immediately slapped back with massive tariffs, and this is how it needs to be done.
The EU needs time to get their economies on war footing. They know what’s coming.
Oh come on ! China has an authoritarian govt. Of course it can immediately respond. The EU is an alliance of 27 countries, it takes time to agree a mutual response, which everyone has to agree to, particularly when you have Putain’s trojan horse in the middle of it disrupting everything.
Sometimes, I wish the other 26 would just collectively agree to kick it out. It’s not even a Trojan Horse at this point, just a wrench in the gears.
Local manufacturing isn’t the goal, they’re going for grift, rug pull, collapse…
Yeah it’s laughable to suggest that russia has a plan that benefits the US in any way. Help us destroy the country and you can loot the ruins is the plan.
Well hey if the trumps became a dynasty, the US becomes a de facto Russian colony.
I bet he’s cool with that.
Then we would actually become second place in his eyes instead of a nation with a bullet hole on his map.
Even writing this makes me wanna gag, this is a horrid little hypothetical I’ve thought of. Someone, somewhere, is hoping this will occur, though.
I mean the coherent portion of the plan was “let’s put what effectively are sales taxes on everything, so we can remove the tax burden completely and permanently from companies and billionaires!”
There is no plan.
Trump’s plan was to get elected. He did that by saying he was going to MAGA, and he proposed to do that by removing immigrants, cutting government services, and taxing imports.
He got elected, so now he’s doing the things he said he would. He’s going to die in a decade or so, and he’s going to live in a hotel between now and then. He absolutely could not care less about the plight of the average global citizen, or that of the average American citizen for that matter. It’s like a game of sim city when you’ve covered the whole map. There’s not really anything left to do other than unleash some disasters.
Imagine a world leader learning that the world is flat. He directs his navy to sail to the edge of the earth and observe the earth in it’s true form. The navy leaves port because that’s what they were told to do but there’s not really a “plan” because the order is fundamentally flawed.
There is a plan. Replace as much of the government as possible with third party vendors run by loyal donors. Aka how they do it in Russia. once the old systems are gone Who’s gonna stop ya?
Here’s what they’re doing to the IRS with or without waiting for the lawsuits to end. (Just posted in another thread about the article it comes from):
The agency is expected to partner with a third-party vendor to manage certain aspects of the data project. Palantir, a software company cofounded by billionaire and Musk associate Peter Thiel, has been brought up consistently by DOGE representatives as a possible candidate, sources tell WIRED.
Yeah. Downsizing government is always conservative speak for “outsourcing tasks to third parties”.
That’s obviously why Republicans are happy to stand by and watch Musk disassemble everything.
However, I maintain that Trump couldn’t care less about that. It doesn’t explain the tariffs
Downsizing government is always conservative speak for “outsourcing tasks to third parties”.
Or removing life-saving regulations and services.
Exactly, AND Musk kicks in money to sway elections for which he is rewarded more government contracts.
coherent
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Imagine thinking trump is foolishly failing at his economic policies and not aptly carrying out putin’s
Jesus fuck. Apparently, people don’t get that he does what he does because he has Putin’s hand up his ass. FFS, what more could he possibly do to convince you? Give away Alaska?
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Crash the market.
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Have him and his billionaire friends buy back most of the market at a reduced rate.
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Own most of America, be Oligarchs for life changing the political and economic system for ever.
Nope, plan seems to be going exactly how it’s supposed to. They probably won’t even use their own money as they control the payment systems for the government.
America is well on its way to begin a dead ex-soviet style authoritarian oligarchy - much worse than the corrupt Capitalist Liberal Democracy it was before.
This won’t end in 2028, and will probably still be a this way or worse in 2058 and beyond. This isn’t some minor change. It’s Trump becoming his own Putin styled leader.
Trump has always just followed his mentors plans, first Roy Cohn, now this. You’re cooked, sorry. Done for.
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But it was, at least, a coherent plan: By imposing large trade barriers on the entire world, he would create an incentive for American business to manufacture and grow all the goods the country previously imported.
Really Atlantic…??
A. You believe that was the plan as opposed to simply bullying the world to bend the knee and beg…?? Bend the knee and beg is Mafia Don Mangolini’s definition of negotiate.
B. You believe that plan to be “coherent”…??
🙄 🤦♀️
Certain parties excluded, not everyone in this administration is a moron. I know, I know, not the right forum to say that but it doesn’t change the fact.
Tariffs can be an effective weapon. But it’s a scalpel, not a machete. For example, we can and should tariff Chinese electric imports for not meeting NHTSA safety standards. Or even better, where they’ve stolen American IP.
However, when used as a machete, everyone is going to lose.
Apparently 80s Trump was too knee deep in coke to learn from Ferris Bueller.
A - Read the rest of the article. He addresses this.
B - I think it’s a reasonable description. As the author says, it’s a stupid, bad plan, but its more or less coherent, in the sense that there’s a basic A+B=C logic to it. He’s primarily contrasting this with the absolute incoherence of the execution.
I’m convinced that Trump is now confident that his family will control the presidency indefinitely. That’s how he can claim “his policies will never change”
Here come the pundits: “This is a president that is known to joke to try and troll the press, that was obviously just a joke he made to troll the press. Its all just obviously just him bull shitting, you can’t believe anything he says, he jokes all the time”
https://archive.ph/xYuVB the archived link for anybody who wants to read it.
