Profoundly Unfit for Governance
(This Clutch of Incompetents Is)
The Penalty for Barking Insanity
The editor of the Economist, Zanny Minton Beddoes. summarizes what she had learned over the past few days of the Trump Tariff Fiasco:
“First, this show has only one protagonist who matters: Mr Trump. There is no tariff strategy beyond his whims. Second, although Mr Trump blinked yesterday, don’t think that this Tariff Show is over. America is still engaged in a brutal tit-for-tat trade war with China. (The two countries’ headline tariffs on each other are now 145% and 84% respectively and neither Mr Trump nor Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, wants to lose face by backing down.) America still has a 10% duty on virtually all other countries, by itself a dramatic increase. And while Mr Trump now promises great deals from negotiations with the dozens of countries queuing up to talk to him, he retains his long-held conviction that tariffs are a powerful weapon to ensure manufacturing jobs return to America. The trouble is that if companies are really to be persuaded to reshore manufacturing jobs to America, then America’s tariffs will need to stay high. But if they stay high, what incentive do trading partners have to give huge concessions? Mr Trump’s muddled convictions, and the contradictions they contain, will hang over all the many bilateral negotiations his team is about to start.”
Trump’s claim that 75 or more companies want to negotiate with him is just that - a claim and so far the only evidence of the claim is what Trump is saying. In short: the claim is very unlikely to be accurate and may be wildly untrue.
Issues of Ilegality
For Consortium News, Andrew Napolitano examines Trump’s false claim that his tariff policy is the result of a “national emergency.” The 1977 International Economic Emergency Powers Act permits the president to impose tariffs on goods emanating from outside the U.S. in the case of an economic emergency. The statute defined an emergency as a sudden and unexpected event that adversely affects U.S. national security or economic prosperity. The Trump administration initially tried to argue that the introduction of fentanyl into the U.S. by foreign persons constituted the emergency but that was a totally implausible basis for the tariffs. So the administration came up with an equally implausible excuse, namely that the U.S. imbalance of trade was the emergency.
But the trade imbalance goes back to 1934, so is clearly not an emergency.
In short, there is no lawful basis for Trump’s imposition of the tariffs. Furthermore the Constitution awards the power to tax exclusively to Congress. Since the Trump sales tax emanated in the White House, it violates the Constitution. Nor can Congress give away any of its core functions
The Supreme Court has made clear that there is no emergency doctrine.
Issues of Criminality
Illegality, certainly, criminality also (if there is a difference), according to Nick Beams of the World Socialist Web Site who notes that Trump’s “pause” yesterday (leading to a significant but temporary recovery on Wall Street yesterday that has been shaved back today):
“Came amid growing signs that the entire financial system—in particular the US Treasury market—was just days or even hours away from a meltdown on the scale of the crises of September 2008 and March 2020, or potentially even greater.”
Especially significant, he says, was the selloff in the US Treasury market—a foundation of the global financial system—which drove yields sharply higher. The crisis in the Treasury market was exacerbated when Hedge funds and other major investors, faced margin calls from the banks - in other words, demands to provide additional funds as collateral to maintain the credit lines essential to their operations. The only available source of additional cash was the sale of Treasury holdings. Foreign investors and governments—which hold roughly one-third of US Treasury bonds—were beginning to pull out of the market.
“There were also signs that hedge funds were being forced to unwind their so-called “basis trades,” a strategy that profits from small differences between the price of Treasury bonds and their corresponding futures contracts. Because the price gap is minimal, these trades rely on massive leverage, with the total volume estimated at around $1 trillion.”
Worse, it was feared that China, the second largest holder of US Treasury bonds, could start to shift out of dollar assets in response to Trump’s economic war against it. The fall of the dollar raised questions as to the viability of its reserve currency status under conditions in which US policy is a major source of instability and uncertainty.
“As with every action of the Trump administration, the events of yesterday were steeped in corruption and criminality. Just before the markets opened—and several hours before the public announcement of the “pause”—Trump posted on social media that “this is a great time to buy.” It will be left to future investigation to uncover how many billions were made by the Trump family and the gang of fascists operating in and around the administration.”
The Inevitability of Recession or Worse
Recession is inevitable:
“Business confidence is in tatters due to the uncertainty generated by the administration’s policies. A 90-day pause for negotiations with the dozens of countries targeted by “reciprocal tariffs” will do nothing to reverse this collapse. Recession is very much on the horizon.”
The targeting of China - Trump appears to have genuinely believed he could entice China to negotiate - was foolish, ignorant or even recklessly disregarding evidence of China’s consistency in not being intimidated by threat and holding its ground. Normal democratic government would never have gained traction on the basis of such a mixture of stupidity and recklessness because it would have consulted broadly and across the political spectrum.
Trump’s tarrif lunacy is possible because the US has abandoned the final, torn shreds of democracy that were left after decades of abuse by both Democrats and Republicans. If the Imperial model that has replaced it was both intelligence and benign then perhaps the consequences would be less dire. But instead we have a vengeful hubris that passes for intelligence.
Tariffs on Asian countries which do important business with China are intended as a warning to them to turn aside from China and yield for their “protection” to the bizarre, peremptory bullying and likely crimination of the US Administration, a foolish choice which now only idiot nations are likely to risk.
“Trump—the grotesque and criminal personification of American imperialism—along with the representatives of ruling classes in every country, will use the “pause” to coordinate their responses to international rivals and sharpen their weapons against the working class at home, in preparation for the eruption of class struggle they all fear and know is coming.”
The Peril of Mental Instability
Intellinews sees things in a comparable light:
“What is amazing is the current instability. Things change on a pin in a day on the back of the latest Trump utterance. He is incontinent with bad ideas. Market boards are swept with red only to flip green the next day after he processes what his latest orders actually mean to the rest of the world.
And the corruption in this administration was made visible to all yesterday and is rank. We already knew they were self-serving unprincipled sycophants, but now it appears they are also just plain greedy. There was an extremely visible spike in buying on the market page only 20 minutes before the tariff 90-day pause announcement. (Kremlin staffers used to do this in the good old days, whenever they were given a ratings-upgrade heads-up by the agencies.)
Trump’s team have revealed themselves to be snollygosters who are, legally (!), enriching themselves from the chaos; US senior politicians are exempt from insider trading rules. Nancy Pelosi is currently the US’ best performing “fund manager” with around a quarter of billion dollars’ worth of AUM after she returned a 54% gain in 2024, according to her publicly accessible tax returns – you know, so that the US government is transparent.”
.As for the US winning the economic war Trump has launched on China:
“Given the US’ dependency on Chinese imports – there is no way Apple and Nike are going to be able to set up their sweatshops in the US – I can’t see Trump winning this fight. Just China, Canada, Mexico and the EU collectively account for more than 50% of all US imports and all three have hit back with retaliatory “reciprocal” tariffs. As we reported, Trump’s tariff regime is economic nonsense and won’t have the desired effect of bringing manufacturing home.”
Onward to a Rational, Equitable, and Fair Multipolar Order!
Howard French of Foreign Policy calls Trump’s tariffs a gift to Xi.
“Yes, Beijing will face difficulties in the short term—perhaps even the long run—but Trump’s behavior distracts Chinese people from Xi’s own shortcomings and lends force to Beijing’s long-standing propaganda about the superiority of its political system and Washington’s villainous designs in trying to keep China down.
To the world at large, China now looks like a more moderate force in the international order oriented toward stability and the status quo. If a country has to choose a superpower to hitch its wagon to, China may loom as the preferable option.”
Tobias Burns of The Hill notes that it is not only about tariffs on Chinese goods, but multiple other areas of economic interaction between the U.S. and China. These include:
“U.S. companies being added to a Chinese blacklist, a deal for the sale of Chinese social media company TikTok being paused, Chinese importers opting for agricultural commodities produced in countries other than the U.S., Chinese currency devaluation and large-scale government subsidization of the private sector.”
The prediction of US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick that Apple can simply relocate from China to the US is a fantasy that reveals the next-to-zero knowledge in this Administration of how the real word of trade actually works. The advantages of manufacture in China are just too overwhelming and if somebody wants to move they are more likely, Burns suggests - according to a new report from Hong Kong-based supply chain auditor and quality control company QIMA - going to look to Indonesia, the Philippines and Cambodia as opposed to the more familiar East Asian alternatives to Chinese production of Vietnam and Bangladesh. If trade volumes between the U.S. and China decrease as a result of the tariffs as they did after the pandemic, indirect supply chains from China through intermediary countries may fill that gap.
At Sonar21, Larry Johnson concludes that even mutual suffering will impact Trump more than it will impact Xi. And if Trump thought that by alienating China the US could cosy up with Russia and drive a stake through the Sino-Russian alliance he is very much mistaken.
The hideous incompetence of this US administration is the best argument possible for a new global order steered by the BRICS.
“China has one advantage over Trump. Any suffering imposed on the Chinese people will easily be blamed on the United States, not Xi. Trump, in turn, will face the wrath of consumers if the prices of electronic and pharmaceutical goods rapidly inflate. He did that, not the Chinese/”
“Trump and his advisors also appear to be betting that this move will help convince Russia that China is not a reliable economic partner, and that Russia will abandon China. I think Trump's tariff tirade will have the opposite effect -- i.e., it will cement Russian and Chinese relations on all fronts and spur them to move quicker on making BRICS a solid alternative to a financial order based on the US dollar.”
Haven't we been taught that the American Constution ensures there are many checks and balances to protect the American people. Well where are they now? Who is seeing these so called checks and balances are triggered. Or is the elete completely preoccupied with the final big booze up before the Empire implodes.