Donald Trump just had his come to Jesus moment
By now the pattern is clear. All that Donald Trump has to do is speak about the economy, and the stock market plummets that day. If he shuts up for a day, the market tries to rebound. But then the next day he opens his mouth again, investors are reminded that he still exists, and the next selloff happens. But here’s the thing.
Trump isn’t just costing people like you and me money and jobs. It’s also making a mess for corporate America. And for better or worse, there is always fallout when you come between wealthy people and their money. To that end, the CEOs of the largest corporate retailers in the United States had a private meeting with Trump this week to essentially tell him to knock it off.
The CEOs of retailers including Walmart, Target, Home Depot, and Lowe’s met with Trump to tell him that his tariff insanity is going to leave their shelves bare by this summer. Then, obviously, one or more of those CEOs decided to inform the media that the meeting had happened. It’s now clear that the mega-corporations are so sick of Trump’s trade wars, they’re applying private and public pressure to try to get him to stop.
So now we know that Trump just had his come to Jesus moment. He’s spent the past three months ignoring (and lashing out) at every economist who’s tried to explain why trade wars don’t work. But it’s one thing to ignore experts, and it’s another thing to defy a united front of CEOs who are collectively pulling the strings on the US retail economy.
If Trump is indeed senile enough to ignore this mandate from the likes of Walmart and Target, and shelves do end up going bare, Trump can look forward to a Herbert Hoover level of unpopularity. Let’s just hope we can avoid a Herbert Hoover level of economic crash.
