Donald Trump just caved
Over the past few days it was starting to become clear that Donald Trump was out of options in his trade war. The US stock market was collapsing. The rest of the world was largely refusing to cave. Trump’s few key external economic allies like Bill Ackman and Kevin O’Leary were publicly telling him to call it off. And his internal economic allies like Peter Navarro and Elon Musk were reduced to publicly attacking each other. The only question was whether anyone surrounding a clearly addled Trump would be able to get him to listen.
Sure enough, something finally gave yesterday. Trump announced that he was pulling the plug on the majority of his tariffs for the next ninety days. US investors then promptly showed Trump what they thought of his tariffs by driving the Dow Jones Industrial Average up by three thousand points.
Ackman was quick to spin the whole thing as a brilliant move on Trump’s part, presumably to try to help Trump save a little face. But in reality just about everyone saw this for what it was: a catastrophic and humiliating admission of failure on Trump’s part. And now he’s opened himself up to allegations of market manipulation for his allies, which could prove to be an enduring scandal for him.
So what did we learn here? For one thing, it appears to be possible for Trump’s babysitters to get him to cave on the things that he’s most obsessed with, if only after he’s managed to do a significant amount of damage to himself and the nation. This suggests that Trump may be devolving from that stage of dementia where he stubbornly clings to certain nonsensical ideas no matter what, and into that stage where he can’t be convinced of anything. It’s not clear which is more dangerous.
In any case, even as we try to assess the damage that Donald Trump has done to the US economy, let’s keep in mind that he’s also harmed himself significantly with this failed gambit. Let’s be sure to go on the offensive against Trump and use this newfound vulnerability against him. The idiot treated the US economy and stock market like a dirty diaper for no good reason. Let’s make sure everybody knows it.
