Risky Business: Everything You Need to Understand Trump's Tariff Insanity
You can’t make stupidity make sense.
We’re going to take a journey today to understand what just happened. We’ll range from the ludicrous attempts to sane-wash Trump’s tariffs to the dishonesty of the “art of the deal” bs.
But the real meat comes in #3 where we’ll talk about the bond market. Because at the heart of everything is the idea of risk.
The United States economy has been the center of global finance for 80 years for one simple reason: Year in and year out, we have been the safest place to do business. The ground rules remained constant and when they changed around the margins, they did so slowly and transparently.
Investing money is always risky—but America had the lowest level of risk on the planet. Our government, legal system, and business community worked hard to make that happen and the rewards we reaped for it were tremendous.
Donald Trump destroyed 80 years of that work over the last week. America is now a risky place to do business. A place where the rules change from day to day. Where no business can trust in the sturdiness of its long-term plans or count on its revenue projections even for the next quarter.
This abstract problem is going to create real-world economic hardship. Let’s dive in.
1. That Ain’t It
In the last week some anti-anti-Trump types have squinted as hard as they could to see a sane version of Trump’s tariff regime. Ross Douthat and Ben Thompson (and even Democrats such as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer1 and Rep. Chris Deluzio) talked about how the old free-trade regime needed reform, and tariffs are an important tool, and the problem is just that Donald Trump has gone too far, too indiscriminately, and—blah blah blah.
STOP IT.
Stop sane-washing this insanity. Right now.
Here are three true things: