U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an event to sign an executive order to shut down the Department of Education, in the East Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 20, 2025.
Everyone should have known what was about to happen when Donald Trump announced huge global tariffs under the slogan "Make America Wealthy Again." Like "Make America Healthy Again," which accompanied the return of deadly measles, the cheery tagline for Trump's trade war foretold ruin -- which has arrived at warp speed.
Within hours, the global markets wiped out trillions of dollars in wealth from the balance sheets of retirement accounts and pension plans as well as banks and corporations. What looms ahead is not the "boom" that Trump has predicted but rather a shrinking economy with both stagnating employment and rising prices. Which is precisely the opposite of what he promised voters last year.
To anyone who has observed Trump closely over the course of his career, this catastrophe was predictable as soon as he gained the unchecked sway he now wields in Washington. He is not a "stable genius" with superior genetic endowment, but a spoiled scion of middling intelligence at best. He is not a brilliant negotiator who can conclude the Ukraine war in a single day or bring the Chinese government to heel, but a failed businessman who wrecked his father's real estate company with bad deals and excessive debt.
Having escaped any accountability for the national destruction incurred during his first presidential term -- from the mismanaged pandemic that cost a million lives to the violent coup attempt of Jan. 6, 2021 -- he has returned to the White House with even greater arrogance, courtesy of the Supreme Court. Secure in power, he is delivering an extremely painful lesson in the consequences of ignorance and incompetence run amok.
Those dismal qualities were instantly on display in every aspect of the tariff rollout, as neither the president nor his phalanx of flunkies could offer any plausible rationale of his actions beyond sloganeering.
Why is the United States seeking to punish its traditional allies in Europe? Why are we penalizing our best trading partners in Canada and Mexico? Why are we imposing trade barriers on tiny countries like Lesotho and remote islands uninhabited by human beings? (We may yet see how brilliantly Trump negotiates with penguins.) And how did Trump formulate the cardboard list of nations and tariffs he brandished as a prop at his "Liberation Day" announcement?
The White House could offer no coherent response to these puzzling questions, which drew contradictory answers from everyone around Trump, as well as the president himself, or no answers at all. That list was reportedly composed on ChatGPT, like a cheating high schooler's homework.
The true purpose of tariffs, according to one of the president's blustering sons, is to assert a muscular dealmaking stance against every nation that supposedly bullied us in the past.
"I wouldn't want to be the last country that tries to negotiate a trade deal with @realDonaldTrump," wrote Eric Trump on X. "The first to negotiate will win -- the last will absolutely lose. I have seen this movie my entire life..."
What Eric actually has seen over his entire life is Daddy negotiating ignominious bankruptcy deals with bankers, but never mind. At roughly the same moment that he and others uttered those tough reassurances, the White House press secretary declared that "this is not a negotiation" because the tariffs "are part of a national emergency response" to nations that have harmed American workers for decades. Trump himself shows no sign of preparing to negotiate anything.
The "national emergency" lie is what undergirds Trump's legal authority, for he would otherwise need Congress to approve the tariff program. But before rubberstamping this madness, congressional leaders might insist that he explain its ultimate purpose, which only raises another set of baffling contradictions.
You see, sometimes Trump suggests that his aim is to collect trillions of dollars in revenue from imports, supposedly enough money to replace the income tax. Simple math proves that to be impossible -- and unlike the income tax, whose impact is progressive, tariffs impose a far greater burden on middle-class and poor families.
At other times, he claims his objective is to rapidly expand domestic production by replacing goods from abroad. That too is futile, because many important crops can't be grown in sufficient quantity in the United States because our industries rely on global supply chains, and because factories take years to build. If we somehow could substitute U.S. products for all our imports, the tariffs wouldn't raise any revenue at all.
Meanwhile, Trump is torching another of his favorite slogans. As investor Steve Rattner explained on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," the current projections show that our markets are plunging faster and our gross domestic product will shrink more than in other countries.
So much for "America First."