Tariff Whiplash As Trump Puts Levies on Hold

WHey, friends. For those of you who are new here, I read the top story in the New York Times every morning so that you don’t have to. If you were forwarded this, you can subscribe here. I’m also doing a five-minute video version of this, each morning at 9 a.m. if you’d like to follow me on LinkedIn (you can always watch the recording later).

I once had a teacher who would give out “lines” as punishment. He gave out so many lines that we’d lose track in a class. Then he wouldn’t follow up to make sure we did them. As a result, we stopped taking him seriously. I never understood why he was so obviously undermining himself by imposing false discipline and eventually I realized he was just out of his depth and doing his best to skate along on surface appearances like the rest of us. Still, he was a teacher. Not a president. Perhaps I should be more gracious to both of them.

Today’s front page story by Ana Swanson and Alan Rappeport focuses on the president’s abrupt reversal of tariffs on the country’s three biggest trading partners, “sowing confusion with investors that depend on trade with the countries.”

It’s been a dreadful week on the stock market although Trump insists “I’m not even looking at the market” because the impact of his now reversed policies, long-term? Well. It’d be so great.

Now we won’t get to find out, of course, because these tariffs are theoretically suspended until April but by then, anything could happen. In the UK, a prime minister lasted less long in office than a lettuce in the fridge after imposing economic policies that tanked the stock market and remember, Trump’s support in the recent election was hugely dependent on the idea that he “understood” a thing called “business.”

More on this lettuce thing before we get to the point, because I love this:

Trump has four more years, of course, unless something dreadfully unfortunate happens.

This week’s tariff reprieve came a day after Trump announced he would do the same for automakers, but it didn’t fix things. All this has really made things hard on people with investments.

Here’s the thing, though. Once you walk through the neighborhood screaming “I’ve got a gun and I’m gonna use it,” people don’t tend to forget it. And economically, that’s sorta what Trump has done this week.

Right? We’re all starting to remember that there’s a crazy man in the neighborhood and we’re considering ways he might do us all further harm. Trump has said the tariffs are about fentanyl deaths but “real-time national data on fentanyl overdose deaths — another metric frequently cited by Trump officials — does not appear to exist.” In other words, it’s a figment of his imagination. I’m surprised that’s not a more prominent part of the reporting, honestly, although the Times has been doing its best to act unsurprised by the worst excesses of the administration in an effort to go the distance. You cry wolf at every little constitutional infringement and lie and you start to sound like Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia after somebody tore down his racist flag over the summer. Sangfroid. It’s a word I’ve been trying to pronounce lately.

Trump’s economic advisers have also argued that the tariffs will not cause inflation. But Treasury Secretary Scott Bessemer acknowledged on Thursday that there could be an uptick in prices as a result.

“Can tariffs be a one-time price adjustment? Yes,” Mr. Bessemer said at the Economic Club of New York.

The paper carries a badly written editorial by columnist David “I should probably write for the Wall Street Journal but then I wouldn’t get the added glee of knowing my coworkers hate my guts” Brooks, saying Trump is “an angry little boy on a great white horse.” I read about ten paragraphs mentioning Nietzsche and Pericles and decided that basically, David Brooks thinks Donald Trump is a punk. Next.

Trump’s PR “strategy”, or instinct, or learned psychosis, whatever you want to call it, is to double down on lies and never admit weakness. But this weak he has, after reversing disastrous economic policy, reverted to pretty obviously weak talking points about how the U.S. shouldn’t need to depend on Canada for wood, for example (it’s the fault of the environmentalist “lunatics” who don’t like logging in America.) If Trump were your racist uncle having a breakdown you’d hear all this muttering for what it is, which is a plea for mercy and space while he backs away with the gun he is desperately trying to put back in his pocket. But it’s impossible to ask for mercy and space when you’re a merciless man who likes to be found liable for sexual abuse in the locker rooms at Bergdorf Goodman.

I expect the American people will, in turn, some of them, lose some confidence in Trump over this week’s disastrous performance. We do tend to forget the man’s worse moments because he’s good at moving us all along to the next worst moment without stopping. He “lives for conflict,” as Mr. Brooks writes. Unfortunately the majority of Americans really do just want their 401 (k) to go up by 7% a year not down 6% in a month and to be able to buy consumer goods as cheaply as possible. On Temu. From China. Without paying 20% more. I believe that’s called having faith in free markets, but what the hell do I know about it?! I’m a writer and we’re all doomed to penury. As my buddy Matt says, “it’s not enough to be the smartest person in the room, and that’s when I started trying to be the best-looking person in the room.”

Thanks for reading the newspaper with me so that you don’t have to! Please pass this newsletter along to friends and family and if you’re new here, thanks for being here. I promise to try as hard as I can to keep the fire burning for media literacy, objective facts and being a sane person, for as long as I can retain my sanity.

Matt Davis lives in Manhattan with his wife and child.