Trump's tariffs are the ultimate MAGA loyalty test

On Friday, I wrote about President Trump's motivation for this daft tariff scheme. It has almost nothing to do with trade, which he doesn't understand. He's running a protection racket, shaking down other countries (as well as universities, law firms and corporations) to force them to do his bidding. If you want more proof of that, listen to him on Sunday night talking about holding up Europe for "a lot of money on a yearly basis but also for past."

Trump's overwhelming resentment toward Europe comes through strongly in his tone. As Salon's Andrew O'Hehir deftly illustrates in this piece, it's not business, it's personal.

He was inappropriately buoyant during that impromptu press conference aboard Air Force One, apparently because he just "won" the championship at his golf course as he does every year (he's one of the best golfers the world has ever known, of course) and evidentely didn't care that at that very moment the futures markets were in freefall in anticipation of a very bad Monday on Wall Street. He is unconcerned about that or any other negative consequence of his senseless tariff policy. He explained to the assembled press pool that everyone will have to "take our medicine," but insisted that his tariffs won't be inflationary because his tariffs on China didn't cause inflation when he was president the first time.

His belief that other nations have been "ripping off" America for decades and that global leaders are laughing at us is sincere. He's been pounding that drum for 40 years. But he's wrong. Of course, the world has not been ripping "us" off or laughing at "us." America is the wealthiest, most powerful nation on earth and has been since at least the turn of the 20th century. We created the rules under which the global economy operates, the U.S. dollar is the world's reserve currency and we are the world's only military superpower.

We have problems, naturally, not the least of which is the massive wealth inequality that distorts our economy, our culture and our politics so much that we are now perilously close to full-on oligarchy. But to characterize America as a poor, downtrodden nation exploited by the rest of the world is fantasy.

Trump clearly isn't bothered at all by the massive backlash his policy has caused, even among many of his strongest supporters on Wall Street and in the business community.

But then his bubble has become almost impermeable, with people around him terrified that he's going to go off half cocked and do something crazy, so he probably isn't hearing half of what people are saying. If what his Cabinet members are telling the press is an accurate reflection of his views, it's pretty clear that he's deeply deluded.

On Sunday, his economic and trade team hit the morning shows and were hardly reassuring. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent did his best Baghdad Bob impression, saying on NBC's "Meet the Press" that people can take comfort that things are running smoothly despite record volume in the markets and then claimed that people nearing or in retirement who've saved money don't check their accounts "day to day." (Billionaires don't sweat a market drop of 10%, so why should anyone else?) This was reminiscent of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick saying a couple of weeks ago that only a fraudster would complain if they didn't get their Social Security check. They can't be more out of touch if they tried.

Lutnick showed up on CBS' "Face the Nation" and babbled so incoherently about robots and manufacturing and "tiny screws" that you had to wonder if someone put something in his morning coffee. Trade Representative Peter Navarro, meanwhile, told Fox News that you can't lose money unless you sell and that we are going to have the greatest boom in the stock market in history. And Agriculture Sec. Brooke Rollins appeared on CNN to reassure Americans that these are the smartest people she's ever worked with.

No doubt Trump was very pleased with all their performances. They told him exactly what he wanted to hear. Unfortunately for him, these people sounded to the rest of America like they had just flown in on a spaceship and virtually no one but the most die-hard MAGA cultist or a member of the Trump administration is buying any of that. Anyone with eyes to see knows that the world economy is in a serious crisis precipitated by Trump and Trump alone.

The Financial Times published a very sharp editorial that featured this observation that should send chills down the spines of Republicans who will be facing the voters next year:

Those hoping for prosperity under Trump have had an unpleasant shock. Wednesday’s so-called liberation day was the culmination of a 10-week long bonfire of conservative economic convention in America. The standard fare of growth-seeking deregulation and tax cuts gave way to an act of amateurish economic vandalism that betrays both the “us vs them” ideology at the heart of everything Trump does, and the lack of any clear framework to his actions.

They note that the public is rejecting Trump's economic agenda: "[T]his week, just before the tariff chaos, 63 per cent of Americans had a negative view of the government’s economic policy, comfortably the highest figure since records began almost 50 years ago." Only 25% said they think they'll be better off in five years, a lower number than at the low point of the financial crisis.

Witness as America discovers the nature of leopards.

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— David Roberts (@volts.wtf) April 5, 2025 at 3:24 PM

The Economist was even more scathing:

IF YOU failed to spot America being “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far” or it being cruelly denied a “turn to prosper”, then congratulations: you have a firmer grip on reality than the president of the United States. It’s hard to know which is more unsettling: that the leader of the free world could spout complete drivel about its most successful and admired economy. Or the fact that on April 2nd, spurred on by his delusions, Donald Trump announced the biggest break in America’s trade policy in over a century—and committed the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era.

It's not just the financial press in high dudgeon over his policies. Over the weekend millions of Americans and people around the world hit the streets in mass demonstrations in everything from big cities to small rural towns in deep red states. The Trump resistance has been gathering steam for some time but this tariff debacle is taking it to the next level.

Nate Cohn of the New York Times speculates that people were already upset about the DOGE debacle and the lawless deportations and the reckless foreign policy team, but purposefully wrecking the economy may just penetrate into the GOP:

If the economic fallout is bad enough, the dissatisfaction with the Trump administration could combine with the longstanding Democratic turnout advantage to make seemingly safe Republican states in 2026 — think Kansas, Iowa and Texas — look plausibly competitive, perhaps even along with control of the Senate. Congressional Republicans’ continued support of (or acquiescence to) Mr. Trump — whether on tariffs or his other excesses — could be in jeopardy.

In a normal world, there would be no question that tanking the economy would be political suicide. But Donald Trump believes he is impervious to the political laws of gravity, and in some ways you can't blame him. He has survived more scandals than any politician in American history. But at some point, you have to wonder if self-preservation may start to look a little different to the other Republicans if the country is mired in recession and the federal government has been so devastated that it can't respond. If not, they may be in for a very big surprise in 2026.