| Hello from London,
How would you describe the past week? Crazy? Unsettling? We opted for “ruination day” to sum up Donald Trump’s disastrous tariff announcements. Markets have been in shock: when they reopen on Monday I’d expect more turmoil. Consumer confidence is plunging. As we report today, recession is starting to look likelier than not, unless his policies are reversed. The Fed is in a bind, caught between worsening prospects for both growth and inflation. Big American companies face dire threats. They are likely targets of retaliation that will surely follow the tariffs announced by China on Friday. And they must decide whether—and how—to reconfigure global supply chains that were decades in the making.
Perhaps America’s courts will try to undo some of the madness. (Read our take on what they might do.) The legal basis of the president’s “emergency” tariffs is questionable. Yet if ordered to undo them, would Mr Trump respect the courts or, as I suspect, defy them? The trouble is, as we have written before, he behaves increasingly like a mobster or an absolute monarch. He is a man in a hurry to make history, who believes his power is unfettered. He relishes employing painful means today for the sake of an end that is a mirage: greatness defined as restoring factory jobs to America.
Alas, many who should be trying to constrain the madness of King Donald—in Congress, in the administration and beyond—instead enable him. Yes, this weekend he belatedly acknowledged growing public dismay about the economy. (I recommend you bookmark our tracker, to monitor public approval of the president.) So far, however, rather than indicating any change, he has told Americans to “hang tough”. Only a handful of Republican senators have voiced even the mildest opposition to his tariffs.
If the past week was tumultuous, the next could be worse. Barring last-minute deals, within days most countries will be subject to “reciprocal” tariffs on top of the 10% levy lumped on almost everyone at the weekend (a few favoured dictatorships, like Russia and North Korea, mysteriously excepted). They must next decide whether and how hard to fight back. Mr Trump is presumably delighted. A man who loves to be at the centre of everything is putting the squeeze on every economy on the planet.
The real meaning of Liberation Day is clear: it refers to the unshackling of Mr Trump himself. This version of Mr Trump is remarkably insouciant. Even as markets crash and the first shots of a trade war ring out, he devotes extra hours to the golf course. No president has ever been so inventive in finding ways to shoot America in the foot. Brace yourself for more.
Now that I am back from my travels I will read your suggestions for the worst airport experience, while listening to our podcast on where planes go to die. |
