Trump fiddles while America burns

After markets crashed globally in response to Trump’s tariffs, slipping into bear territory on Monday before wobbling up, down and back up again, the White House issued a tone deaf slapback about Trump’s golf game, saying, “[t]he President won his second round matchup of the Senior Club Championship today in Jupiter, FL, and advances to the Championship Round tomorrow.”

As Americans watch their retirement accounts drop, Trump has spent one-third of his 76 days back in office on the golf course, indicating he couldn’t care less. No one from his administration has faced critical questions about his “Liberation Day” strategy, and it appears Trump used ChatGPT to generate the whole thing.

As of Monday morning, stock markets already had lost more than $6 trillion in value, a figure projected to worsen as the tariffs are applied. Under Trump’s plan, American consumers will pay an additional $8 trillion in taxes-- tariffs imposed on imported every day goods like lightbulbs and pomegranites-- over a ten year period. This amount, along with alleged savings from DOGE’s chainsaw attack on federal agencies, will be used to pay for Trump’s second round of $4.5 trillion tax cuts for the rich.

Economists note that Trump’s tariffs will result in a massive redistribution of wealth, a reverse Robin Hood strategy for taking from the poor to enrich the wealthy political donors who put Trump back in office.

Trump’s overly simplistic tariff chart

Trump has been praising tariffs for months. After jerking our best friends, trading partners and neighbors around last month, he almost had the beginning of a concept for a tariff plan last week. In true reality-TV fashion, Trump staged the announcement with great Rose Garden fanfare, calling a press conference to unveil his half-baked plan. He branded and marketed the “Liberation Day” event, but spent almost no time developing an actual policy.

As markets crashed the world over, it became obvious that the overly simplified tariff chart prop he showed the media was generated with basic online AI from ChatGPT. Multiple simple, online AI programs, including 03 high, Gemini 2.5 pro, Claude 3.7, and Grok all produced the same answers spit out on Trump’s tariff chart when commanded to “make easy tariff policy.”

Policy writer Steve Bonnell observed on X that, Trump advisors “asked ChatGPT to calculate the tariffs from other countries, which is why the tariffs make absolutely no f—cking sense. They're simply dividing the trade deficit we have with a country with our imports from that country, or using 10 percent, whichever is greater.” In other words, it’s an absurdly simplistic view of global trade economics.

Trump officials claim they calculated complexities they obviously didn’t

Trump officials repeatedly lied about the method used to calculate Trump’s tariff rates, claiming that for every targeted economy, “tariff and non tariff barriers” and policies were analyzed, assessed and quantified individually. What BS. As ChatGPT results prove, market and currency nuances were not quantified; nothing was considered other than macro-simplistic dollar amounts.

Decidedly NOT considered in Trump’s tariffs: currency variables, labor variables, VAT taxes, reciprocal licensing, subsidies, pre-existing and negotiated product-specific tariffs, geopolitical sanctions, transportation costs, etc., etc. Also excluded from consideration? The entire service sector, where American firms enjoy a huge surplus, now in jeopardy. Google AI reports that in 2023, the U.S. exported $1.02 trillion in services, delivering a surplus Trump didn’t recognize.

There’s no strategy here folks, it’s an across the board, moronic attack on the world economy executed by sharpie.

Fox News has to put lipstick on Trump’s idiotic Liberation Day pig

World leaders expressed their shock and outrage, and didn’t hold back about tarrifs so ill-conceived they look like sabotage:

·EU’s commissioner :“Uncertainty will spiral… consequences will be dire for millions of people around the globe.”

·China, after imposing retaliatory 34% tariff on the US: “There are no winners in trade wars, and there is no way out for protectionism.”

·Germany's Chancellor: “Trump’s tariffs are fundamentally wrong and an attack on a trade system that has created prosperity all round the world.”

·Australia’s Prime Minister: Trump’s tariffs were “not the act of a friend.”

· The penguins: WTF did penguins ever do to Trump? We’re only half black!

People who watch Fox News, now over half the country, didn’t hear, read, or see any of that. Last week, as world markets crashed, the folks over at Fox News focused on bathrooms, sports, and what’s in your neighbors’ underpants. They fawned over how strong Trump, the “New Sheriff in town” looked as he “warned” governors who “defy his orders.”

Mostly ignoring the stock market crash, Fox delivered its customary spin on Trump’s tariffs with the headline, “Secretary of State Rubio stands up to European leaders, says Trump is absolutely right.”

Fox propaganda aside, the world economy is in danger

Trump financial advisor said this morning that worries over a recession “are silly,” given that tax cuts for the rich are coming later in the year. JP Morgan doesn’t think they’re silly, and is now predicting a 60 percent chance of a recession by the end of the year, also noting that, “This year's 22-percentage tariff increase amounts to the largest tax hike since 1968.”

The Wall Street Journal predicts that market values will likely continue to fall. Neither Navarro nor Trump seem to understand that factory owners can’t switch their locations overnight; investment strategies aren’t that nimble and take years to develop. They’re also tone deaf to the fact that foreign and domestic corporations need the rule of law to invest safely, and are repelled by Trump’s hatchet attacks on judges, lawfirms and the judiciary.

Financial markets, predictably, are reeling. Despite Trump’s false messaging that “tariffs are tax cuts,” everyone outside the MAGA bubble knows tariffs are a regressive tax paid by working-class Americans.

By all indicators, Trump has not considered any of the complexities needed to develop a strategic trade package, and says he “couldn’t care less” about the price of cars. Like a child with a singular focus on his playmate’s toy, Trump has been so fixated on 19^th century tariffs and 19^thcentury imperialism that rational policy discussions have stopped.

What we’re left with is a child tyrant’s policies, putting our economic survival in jeopardy.

Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1^st and 14^th A defense. Her columns are published in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story,Salon,Smart News and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.