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On tariffs: what is Trump thinking? — 47 Comments

1. To the general question “What is Trump thinking?” I believe we may propose some variant of this: *Win! How do I go about this thing I want such that I win the contest in the end?*

2. Absolutely not caring about whatever insults the press is going to throw your way is wonderfully freeing.

3. what is a little odd, is that Schiff is one who think there should be a recession, to wrench the system back into place, however even some mild tweaks were taken poorly, (and I suspect there is more than a degree of sabotage, by interested parties,) like the big mutual funds like fidelity and black rock,

4. There seem to be a lot of folks out there who, if they are not just being disingenuous, don’t realize that if you are negotiating you can’t say publicly that “this is a tactic” or “this is not my true desired outcome and I’m willing to get something less extreme”.

   Government officials traditionally do not make statements staking out extreme positions that they are willing to be negotiated away from, but they do not actually state their actual intentions either. Instead, they make vague pronouncements that are intended to be interpreted specifically in different ways depending on who hears them. A lot of people are seemingly still confused that Trump’s statements do not follow this mold.

5. Trump definitely thinks outside the box, more as a bare-knuckle New Yawk real estate developer and not a genteel globalist.

   He won’t get everything right, but those who assume he is just an arrogant dolt are the arrogant dolts IMO.

6. What is Trump thinking? Tactically? It’s hard to say. It sure looks to me as though the bond market activity on Tuesday spooked him into thinking he was about to cause a depression instead of a recession, per his own words. Was nearly crashing the bond market part of his master plan? I doubt it. Did the risk of crashing the bond market cause Trump to accelerate a previously-planned pause? I also doubt it. If the plan all along was to pull up, why wait until he had already inflicted so much damage on US businesses with overseas orders this week? You also have the not-so-small problem of the lack of a consistent message coming out of the administration its goals. Is the administration using tariffs to protect US industry and raise revenue, per Navarro and Lutnick, or to extract concessions from trading partners, per Bessent? Which group has Trump’s ear?

   What is Trump thinking strategically? Here again, I don’t get it. It is generally good strategy to unite your own coalition and split your opponent’s coalition. Trump did a fairly good job of this (for three months). Most all Republicans are onboard with DOGE finding and (hopefully) eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, and Democrats oppose these measures at their peril. Same with the anti-woke stuff, the trans stuff, and all of the other “80-20” issues that we were talking about for the first three months of the year.

   Not so much on tariffs. Trump has split his own coalition and united the opposition. That one’s hard to explain.

   Frankly, it looks to me as though Trump is so hyperactive and makes so many data points that it is possible to “connect the dots” in any of a number of different ways to make Trump out to be a genius or an idiot, depending on your preference. I agree with neo in at least this, he isn’t an idiot, but neither is he a genius.

7. Neo: it’s great that you are adding a link to the fellas at RUTHLESS.

8. Joseph E Shaffer III:

   I’ve been a fan of theirs for a while. Smart and funny.

   And if you watch the Ted Cruz interview from the beginning, he’s very funny too.

9. I’m not taking negotiation advice from anyone that hasn’t ever negotiated anything. I was involved in contract and legal negotiations throughout my working career. Negotiating is not an event, it is a process. It involves leverage, posturing, bluffing, and demands. You identify what you want to achieve before the process starts. You lay out how you expect to get it, and understand that you will have to adjust your tactics as you move through the discussions. You decide, in advance, what you will accept, and what will cause you to walk away from the table.

   Every move Trump makes is planned. He is rarely caught off guard – Zelensky’s visit to the White House is the only example I can recall where Trump was ambushed and surprised.

   None of what he does is irreversible, so he has the ability to adjust in real time for any unanticipated reactions.

10. All the fearmongering and hysteria makes me just… intrigued by the tariff plan, really. And willing to be patient and see how things play out.

    Most of us who voted for Trump did so because we wanted someone who wouldn’t “play by the rules.” We didn’t want “business as usual.” We wanted someone to shake things up. To make the expert class run for the hills. And we were playing the long game. It wasn’t about “cheap eggs” in 2025. It was about what we want the world to look like in 2035.

    And maybe I’m just speaking for myself, but I expected a lot of pushback to all of Trump’s plans, especially those with global impact. I didn’t expect the “Golden Age of America” to arrive by this month. In fact, I rather expected chaos, and was willing to make the gamble that it would be worth it.

11. Finally had time to listen to this. Ted Cruz is great, and is exactly right. Thanks for posting.

12. No one can approve of a POTUS act that evaporates 16% of the 2025 American GDP overnight. Many Americans have been grievously harmed by The Donald’s tariff plays, and they matter, the soon-to-retire on depleted 401-Ks perhaps most of all. His actions primarily brutalize the US middle class; the poor are wards of the state, and the wealthy can tolerate a 15-25% hit to their assets (if those recover, given enough time).
    The bond and stock market reactions have been huge. My assets, managed by a pretty conservative Trust firm, went down ~15%, Blam!, then up 7%, then back down.
    It is insane to use fiat massive tariffs to return manufacturing back to the USA, offshored for a half-century now.. Can’t build factories overnight.

13. CC™ writes a tome ignoring the wisdom of ages
    about keeping your mouth shut when you don’t know what you are talking about; specifically what President Trump is thinking.

    But CC™ is still cock sure about The Great Orange Whale.

    And Cicero proves to be a fair weather patriot. It is comming on Easter but the older Exodus story of the many who wanted Moses to take the back to slavery under Pharaoh seems apt. How soon FJB, his junta, and the Administrative leviathian are forgotten.

    I’m 70 and still working full time, by choice, and they are glad that I am. FWIW.

14. Watching US Conservatives continue to defend Trump while he trashes the country is deeply depressing. Where is all this ‘thinking outside the box’ getting you? One look at the bond markets shows the situation you are in. Will you still defend him if he creates a recession? Go look at manufacturing investment in the US and ask yourself if all this chaos is producing a better result that what Biden managed with IRA and Chips.

    Trump is what he is – a man far more concerned about the deal for him – as well as keeping all the attention on him – and if that works for the US as well that is cool and if not he just lies about it.

    And he does lie. You all excuse him while he claims his stream of, often barely comprehensible, dishonest rhetoric with its cruel jokes and playground egoism is ‘the weave’.

    From what I have read on here it is clear many have little more than contempt for traditional US allies and some even share Trump’s favourable view of the anti democratic ‘strong men’ characters. Putin, Orban, Netanyahu and the rest. Unwilling to be constrained by constitutions or Judges. You may well think Europe is in decline, Greenland should be yours along with Canada, Japan, S Korea, Australia, all of Africa, Israel, and … well everyone is ripping you off but you still have to work with them. The alternative is to shut yourselves off from the world.

    As for the laughable “Art of the Deal” concept. What have you gained from the last week apart from a festival of insider trading? Nothing and it was paused when the bond markets forced Trump to back down. And has Xi come running to kiss trumps ass? Certainly not and in any competition involving who can stand the most pain to the population we all know the Chinese will win.

    The saddest bit is you will never give up on Trump and as things get worse you will find scapegoats to blame. Fox news style hagiography dominates the US right and there is almost a fear of pointing out his limitations. When Trump dies the whole pack of his close supporters will turn on each other even more viciously than they do now.

    Over to you – what has he achieved? Any tax cuts or increased freedoms, business investment you have as evidence? Any prosecutions from these gigantic figures for fraud Doge claim? Anybody rightfully deported that the SC won’t be fetching back? Any peace deals in Ukraine in Day 1? Or will all the comeback be the usual accusations of trolling and the weird insults?

15. I suspect not many other countries in the world let foreigners vote in their elections.
    I see no reason why this shouldn’t be law in every state, yet know why it isn’t.

    David wish had more time. We are broke beyond broke.You can see what big government has been doing with its tax money from just a few moths of DOGE.
    If President Trump can’t fix it another puppet like Sundowner was who let the bureaucracy run the country and live like fat cats wasn’t going to do better.

16. David Clayton is contining in his tiresome trolling. Rue Britainia, a formerly great nation reduced to jailing people for thought crimes while it’s BBC goes full Muslim propaganda.

    Is it worth posting the most recent links to shame the troll? Best to just scroll by David Clayron from now on (blah, blah, blah I hate Trump, Americans are cretins, blah, blah, blah).

17. Watching US Conservatives continue to defend Trump .,,
    ==
    There are 440 words in this comment and one would be hard put to find five devoted to an observation that might actually interest or persuade anyone.

18. David Clayton – What I see on the American right over the past few weeks is the mental vapor lock that occurs when reality starts to conflict with peoples’ deeply held beliefs.

    We were rightfully incensed when Biden & Obama ignored the law. We were rightfully incensed when Biden & Obama demonized courts that ruled against them. We were rightfully incensed when Biden & Obama abused the law to punish their political enemies. We were rightfully incensed when Biden & Obama claimed non-existent loopholes in various statutes to expand executive authority beyond all known bounds. We were rightfully incensed when Biden & Obama abusively dragged the whole country along on their various ideological crusades.

    Trump was supposed to fight all that. I think that many on the American right deeply internalized the idea that Trump was the solution to all that. He’s not. He never was. Instead, he’s doing exactly the same thing as Obama and Biden, just in a different direction, a that direction may prove to be every bit as destructive.

    This isn’t a surprise to me. I always thought this was a possibility for Trump 2.0, especially after most of the sane members of the GOP were purged from Trump’s orbit and replaced with crackpots and amateurs like Peter Navarro, Pete “the bombing schedule is not classified” Hegseth, and Laura Loomer. I see a lot of cognitive dissonance among others on the American right, though, as they begin to figure things out. Well, its too late now.

    And you’re absolutely right about results. Trump is accomplishing nothing but destruction. Neither he nor anyone from his MAGA movement are going to be in power when its time to pick up the pieces. In fact, that opportunity is more than likely going to fall to progressive Democrats.

19. No one can approve of a POTUS act that evaporates 16% of the 2025 American GDP overnight.
    ==
    He did not. The spot market capitalization of equities is not the domestic product. It’s a metric of practical import for those who wish to liquidate positions as we speak and certainly a source of anxiety for others. It usually has only a faint echo in the real economy bar among companies who are planning an issue.

20. David Clayton – What I see on the American right over the past few weeks is the mental vapor lock that occurs when reality starts to conflict with peoples’ deeply held beliefs.
    ==
    What we see from you is the sort of babble we might expect from (1) someone employed by Glitch McConnell, (2) someone employed by the business lobbies for which Glitch McConnell carries water, (3) someone on Pierre Omidyar’s dole, or (4) an undercover PR operative for the Democratic National Committee.

21. Sigh. . . more ad hominem from Art Deco. That’s almost as predictable as om criticizing me for speculating about what Trump might be thinking in a thread titled. . . wait for it. . . “On tariffs: what is Trump thinking.”

22. For the past few days (sorry, no citations), I’ve read some claims that Trump is trying to establish a free trade zone that excludes China, but includes everybody else.

    Is that what Trump is thinking? I have no idea. Probably not worth adding such a low-information comment, but I will anyway. A bad habit of retirement? As a child, I laughed at many of the local newspaper’s letters to the editor. Uh oh.

23. Navarro has studied how the US has surrendered on every trade agreement leaving our infrastructure that much more barren

24. CC™ writes another tome ending with the usual refrain, I hate The Great Orange Whale.

    And did CC™ have any insight about what President Trump is thinking about tariffs? Not really, but we learned that CC™ really hates The Great Orange Whale.

    But all is not lost, CC™ and David Clayton can watch each other’s 6 and fight off the MAGA zombies. It’s what true conservatives do.

25. Sigh. . . more ad hominem from Art Deco.
    ==
    The term ad hominem does not mean what you fancy it means.
    ==
    No serious person cares about news cycle shizz other than the generators of the news cycle. There will be another bright shiny object next week. I’ve lost track of the number of verbose posts you’ve offered about Mr. Hegseth’s conference calls. The whole controversy was a matter of no interest and everyone here knows that. You pretend otherwise for effect. Like a PR operative.

26. Meanwhile the Houthis top leadership are getting clobbered oddly that doesnt seem interesting

    The Uk somehow forgot in the last forty years why it was apart from europes machinations from say the last 600 years

27. “Go look at manufacturing investment in the US and ask yourself if all this chaos is producing a better result that what Biden managed with IRA and Chips.” -David Clayton

    Adding more debt to the country isn’t a better result. When considering the broader legislative context under President Biden, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that these acts, along with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and other measures, added about $4.7 trillion to the national debt over his four-year term (January 2021 to January 2025). Excluding the American Rescue Plan, which accounted for $2.1 trillion of that, the remaining laws (including CHIPS and IRA) are estimated to have added $2.6 trillion in net new ten-year debt.

    What President Trump is attempting is to increase growth by not using government deficit spending. The quickest way to do that is tariffs. If the tariffs produce reshoring of manufacturing/industry and reduced trade barriers on American products exported, then it will be a success.

    “One look at the bond markets shows the situation you are in.” – David Clayton

    We are certainly in a dire situation with our debt, but please explain what you mean by this. Thanks.

28. Hi Brian E what I meant was I didn’t approve of what Biden did but is this better? Looking at the effects on manufacturing investment and the cost of borrowing I would say no.
    And that’s the reason the bond markets matter. When they turn against a country the debt gets more expensive as you have to pay higher interest to encourage people to lend you money. In the UK we are all too well aware of this after the Truss fiasco. In the US you have been fortunate as the global reserve country with a stable political system and thriving economy. This encouraged the bond markets to see you as the ultimate in safe investments and so you could borrow at low interest. Now you will find the debt – which you will increase again this year – even more difficult to manage. If trade and growth drops you will get a lower tax return, bigger deficit and yet more debt.
    This is not the stuff to play silly games with. None of Trump’s predecessors, including himself, frightened the markets in the way he has done since January.
    They want a stable US to invest in. That means not changing the trading rules on a daily basis.

    And the US isn’t in such a dire situation. Lowish inflation , low unemployment , a dynamic economy woth many excellent businesses and products. It is probably clear I have never liked or trusted Trump but in his first term he didn’t seek to break things without a clear idea of what was coming next. Are we having tariffs? Or is it all part of the Art of the Deal? Who knows. I doubt he does.

    You should all be more positive about your country – it has loads going for it.

29. If our troll thinks what the FJB junta was doing is an argument against what President Trump is doing. well say no more.

    There is a lot of ruin in a nation, say in Britain for example.

30. You should all be more positive about your country – it has loads going for it.

    David Clayton:

    Sounds like concern trolling.

    You keep framing your comments as helpful or concerned, but they often come off as condescending and dismissive of other perspectives. If you’re here to have a real conversation, great. But if not, it’s hard to see the point.

    In any even it’s always a red flag to me when commenters give unsolicited advice like this.

    Unless I’m asking for advice, I for one am never interested in what other people think I “should” be doing.

31. That’s silly. If FJB said “Don’t jump off the bridge!”, would you say “Well, FJB says “Don’t jump off the bridge! I hate him and think he’s wrong about everything, so therefore, jumping off the bridge must be a GREAT idea! Geronimooooo…!

    *splash*

    “Uh, OK, I have broken almost every bone in my body, and now I’m being carried out to sea where I will drown in agony. Darn FJB! It’s all his fault!” 😉

32. spending trillions on garbage like windmills, which advantages China while proscribing the oil and gas which is our comparative advantage, inflating the currency, letting Xi scoop up all our telecommunications from coast to coast, because he was indeed lesuo through his son, those are just some of the wrong calls,

33. BJ

    When CC™ or a Brit talks about how wise the FJB junta and it’s aparachitks were when compared to the Trump admistration I guess they have no memory of 2019 through 2024. Do you have any memory of that time?

    I don’t like everything President Trump has said since taking office and have no plans to take up freestyle base jumping (no ‘chute, no bungees, one thrill only), so try harder.

    Time will tell how this tariff thing sorts out, especially regarding China. You remember China?

34. I don’t know if DOGE and Trump’s tariffs and the executive orders are the optimal ways to go about getting the U.S. on a better path; but almost none of the naysayers who are not on the Left offer any better ideas.

    I have heard a lot of people, like Schiff, who have for years been proclaiming the U.S. is headed for disaster, and who also appear to believe it, yet they attack Trump’s moves since his Inauguration.

    Many of his attackers on the right (and Libertarians and Libertarian-leaners) agree the system is a complete mess, and nearly unworkable. And they also seem to believe drastic, immediate change is required. Well, how else can you do that but through extreme, unorthodox measures? But every time Trump does something extreme and unorthodox they plea for a more measured, reasoned approach. Measured and reasoned gets you a lot of talk through November, 2026 and midterm elections that punish the administration because voters haven’t seen results.

    If you truly believe you are on your own 1 yard line and there are only 5 seconds left in the football game you have to throw a Hail Mary and hope your wide receiver has a better vertical than their safety, or you get a lucky bounce off someone’s fingertips and your guy comes down with the ball in the end zone.

    Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over, yet expecting different results.

    “Do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.

    The swine are the swamp, MSM, U.N…

35. OM,

    (I don’t mean to shout, but the #$@&! spellcheck keeps converting your screen name to “I’m”, for some reason known only to itself)

    Anyway, I’m certainly glad you have forever forsaken the “Jumping From High Places” Club. The world needs you here, and the Air Force has a gruesome little ditty called “Blood Upon The Risers” to remind us what happens when one doesn’t check one’s parachute properly. 😉

    That being said, to reject everything just because FJB once endorsed it is as illogical as rejecting everything because Trump once endorsed it. Tariffs have their place, but they need to be used like a surgeon uses a scalpel: at certain places at certain times and always carefully, and never too often or too much.

    Unfortunately, right now, the world sees Trump using tariffs like Leatherface using a chainsaw on hapless Texas tourists. Everything, everywhere, and all at once! Yes, Leatherface might be fun, and entertaining for some folks to watch (am I the only one here? Guess so. 🙁 , but he’s flat out terrifying to most folks, and they certainly don’t want to see him in real life. Nobody wants to stay at Leatherface’s nice white farmhouse, no matter how neat and clean he keeps it, and nobody wants to invest in Leatherface’s bond market either.

    Now, maybe Trump likes to feared like Leatherface. The big guy with the chainsaw is the star of one of the successful horror franchises in history, and who doesn’t like success? But once you’ve got the rep for being crazy, what can you do with it?

    Say, for example, China decides to blockade Taiwan. What can Trump do about it? He says “They won’t do it because they think I’m effing crazy and will use nukes on them.” he says.

    OK, but if China calls his nuclear bluff, what then? “I would put tariffs on them, like 150% tariffs.” he says. All right, but since he’s already put 145 % tariffs on China, so a 5 % increase isn’t going to be much of a deterrent,

    What then?

36. Now, I’m sure there are those of you out there who are shaking their heads and saying “BJ, that’s just crazy leftist stuff.” OK. Check out the “Wall Street Journal” editorial page, which is about as right-wing as you can get. Peggy Noonan is wringing her hands, and Holman Jenkins is wishing that Gov. Andy Beshear had run instead of Kamela, because Beshear might have beaten Trump.

    And yes, I do remember Biden. Food was cheaper (especially eggs), foreign tourists were booking vacations here, nobody was boycotting American products, people could rely on accurate weather reports, FEMA and Social Security, and my stock portfolio was looking a lot healthier. I’ve lost at least 100K since Trump took office and that’s just one stock. 🙁

    It’s fine to say “Oh, the market was overvalued. It will grow back in 30 years.” Maybe billionaires like Trump and Elon can afford to “ride it out”, but if you’re sending your kid to college in the fall, or hoping to retire in the next five years, or trying to buy your first house, then no, you can’t afford to wait thirty years for the market to “ride it out”.

    So yes, that’s why more and more people are saying “Stop the Trump train. I want to get off.”

37. BJ, the market was overvalued and if you’re close to retirement, you shouldn’t have your money in risky investments. You shouldn’t put more than 20% at risk.

    You need to find a new investment advisor.

    I was listening to Charles Payne recently. I was shocked when he said you shouldn’t invest in 8% return stocks when you can get 30% returns.

38. BJ:

    Peggy Noonan is not a person anyone actually on the right would call a person on the right. See this.

39. “Hi Brian E what I meant was I didn’t approve of what Biden did”

    You are packed so full of trolling horseshit Clayton it’s spurting out your ears in jet streams. Link us to any and all comments you made here or elsewhere objecting to Biden when he was President. You can’t because you didn’t. That is a classic troll tactic, pretending to be “even-handed”.

    I’m beginning to doubt whether Clayton is even “British” or if that’s just a new diversionary tactic from the troll farm. Of course he might be AI in the first place.

40. “concern troll”

    Ya think huxley? Clayton is one of the most blatant trolls I’ve ever seen.

41. “Check out the “Wall Street Journal” editorial page, which is about as right-wing as you can get. ”

    Not any more. They were never more than grudgingly for Trump to begin with and now they’e gone full TDS and yes it began before the tariff moves. And don’t even think about the “news” pages of the WSJ, they are as bad if not worse than the NYT and WaPoo.

42. Seeing as the murdoch sons are steering newscorp in general to the left but the barclay beancounters at the Torygraph and The Mails are nearly as bad all of these publications many of them have pulled their masks off

    Their protestations against xi none withstanding they have given the game away

    Its a tricky gamble china owns nearly everyone on fleet street and threadneedle as well

43. BJ needs to get out more often.

    Check out the “Wall Street Journal” editorial page, which is about as right wing as it gets.

    LOL. Own goal.

    Check out the Babalon Bee, BJ, but don’t fact check it, because although it is satire, it turns out to be correct more often than the “factual” media.

44. My thoughts are similar to Rufus’. It’s never a convenient time for extreme or unorthodox measures, and they’re always going to make somebody angry, but they have to come eventually.

    Like Thomas Paine said, those who say “Give me peace in my day!” are selfish. Chaos now for a better future? I’ll take it…

45. Holman Jenkins is wishing that Gov. Andy Beshear had run instead of Kamela, because Beshear might have beaten Trump.
    ==
    Chuckles. The Democratic Party had an abnormally deep bench in 2020. It included four men who had founded profitable businesses, a quondam business executive, and three state governors. Michael Bloomberg had both founded a business and done a creditable job as Mayor of New York. John Hickenlooper had been both a business executive and state executive. Steve Bullock had managed to appeal to a red state electorate. The Democratic primary electorate took a glance at Bloomberg and ignored the rest. What they actually wanted was
    ==
    (1) a corporate lawyer turned prosecutor with a history of abusing subordinates,
    ==
    (2) an ambulatory resume who had put in time as a none-too-accomplished small city mayor (marketing himself as gay).
    ==
    (3) A lapsed law professor (now Senator) whose career was crucially advanced by affirmative action fraud.
    ==
    (4) A onetime n’er do well who found his niche in municipal politics in Burlington, Vt, then parked in Congress for thirty years. He’s a Trotskyist. Cool, no?
    ==
    (5) A Washington fixture of nearly 50 years duration who had a known history of comical mendacity and whose notable activity over 20-odd years was running a pay-for-play operation with the legwork done by his brother and drug-addled sex fiend of a son.

46. Another interesting All-In podcast, this time discussing/cross-talking about tariffs with Larry Summers, Ezra Klein, Chamath and Sacks.

    It does clarify the battle lines between the globalists and the economic nationalists.

    A couple of interesting graphs around the 3 minute mark putting the recent sell-off in perspective.

    The Great Tariff Debate with David Sacks, Larry Summers, and Ezra Klein
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcmMOZKnKAk

47. Two smart people (chamath and sacks) and two knaves (klein and summers)

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