You would think the brightest of us would be the most likely to succumb to overconfidence, to arrogance, even, yet as we have seen most recently, it is the stupid who have fallen victim to the idea that they are infallible. Much to our detriment, and unfortunately the world’s as well, their sense of superiority, self-importance, and condescension know no bounds. You can pick amongst Stephen Miller, Elon Musk, Pete Hegseth, or Donald Trump for an example of the toxic mix of incompetence and supreme pomposity that rules the day in Truskmumpia. Together, they have tanked our economy, destroyed the rule of law, and obliterated any trust others might have in America. Remarkably, they seem oblivious to how deeply they are damaging the republic.
Perhaps because my mother early on was raised by unhappy nuns, Catholicism has never done it for me, and while she sometimes leveled the threat to take me to Mass, only once did I make it through the haze of incense to partake in the sacrament. That said, I imagine I have a far more charitable appreciation of Jesus than our current president who, in several fell swoops, took this Easter season to reveal to us all how very far he has strayed:
Trump then couldn’t help but once again demonstrate how unacquainted he is with propriety:
Who looks forward to a funeral except someone who always makes it about himself?
Sadly, this Truskmumpian mix of madness, out-of-control grievance, and outright distortion has infected the body politic and has fogged the minds of so many. It is this lethal combination of delusion and tyrannical certainty that has prompted Donald Trump and his minions to tank the semi-successful Biden economy. Of course, the Biden economy had failed in ways to better protect the working class, but Trump has replaced it with a chaos that, in a matter of months, has managed to wipe out trillions of dollars of wealth.
I confess I often seem to be trapped in a dystopian Ground Hog Day, living in a hellish high school where the stupid bullies along with the very worst teachers—incompetents like Peter Navarro, Kristi Norm, Pam Bondi, Pete Hegseth, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—have taken over. Best not to be sent to the principal’s office, as I occasionally used to be, because you will be disciplined by Elon Musk, who, when he is not presiding over dismantling everything, is using his sperm to save the future, somehow ignoring the likelihood he will just spread his worsening madness to an increasing number of neglected kids. Children he calls—without irony—his legions.
Now, some political commentators couldn’t wait to rip her, but I was glad to hear Sen. Lisa Murkowski admit to feeling what so many of her constituents, and so many across America and I suspect the world, are feeling: fear.
Senator Lisa Murkowski, the moderate Alaska Republican who has routinely broken with her party to criticize President Trump, has made a startling admission about the reality of serving in public office at a time when an unbound leader in the Oval Office is bent on retribution against his political foes. ‘We are all afraid,’ Ms. Murkowski said, speaking at a conference in Anchorage on Monday. After pausing for about five seconds, she acknowledged: ‘It’s quite a statement. But we are in a time and a place where I certainly have not been here before. I’ll tell you, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice, because retaliation is real. And that’s not right.’
Sen. Murkowski is right to be afraid. Everyone who can see what is happening around us has reason to fear. To worry about those without great wealth, to fear for those in the immigrant community, for women who might find themselves pregnant, for students and teachers who haven’t learned to stay silent, to worry about anyone whose sexuality departs even the slightest from the tattooed, alcohol-fueled predatory male chauvinism of Hegseth.
You couldn’t ask for a clearer example of what the war against smarts and the triumph of the ignorant has wrought than the picture painted by this story April 12, 2025, story in The New York Times: “As Tariffs Hit, Americans Are Racing to Buy Car Seats, iPhones and Christmas Gifts.”
So, yes, lacking any real power to influence policy, one response to the increasing uncertainty of Donald Trump’s nonsensical trade war is to rush to buy something, anything, before it becomes even more expensive. Americans are rushing to buy car seats for kids already here or on the way and a bunch of gifts so, at least, there is something to put under the Christmas tree.
The Times writes:
The White House this week imposed a minimum tariff rate of 145 percent on all Chinese imports to the United States, on top of other previously announced levies, including a 25 percent tariff on steel, aluminum, cars and car parts. And last week, Mr. Trump ordered the end of a loophole that had allowed goods from China worth less than $800 to enter the United States without tariffs. Some early data show that consumers flocked to stores and stocked up on goods after the administration announced sweeping tariffs on nearly all trading partners. Mr. Trump backed down on some of those threats this week and instituted a 90-day pause on more punishing levies. But he said that the halt would not apply to China, and he instead raised tariffs again on all Chinese goods.
China is the second largest source of U.S. imports, and makes the bulk of the world’s cellphones, computers and toys. According to Earnest Analytics, a firm that analyzes data on millions of debit and credit card payments, consumer spending at Apple was up 20 percent between April 2 and April 7 compared with average spending there in recent months. Spending was also up 10 percent at Home Depot and 18 percent at the department store chain Belk, according to the analysis.
Consumers have also raced to grocery stores, large discount chains and car dealerships in recent days. Purchases of shelf-stable goods surged in the five days following Mr. Trump’s tariff announcement on April 2, with sales of canned and jarred vegetables up 23 percent, sales of instant coffee up 20 percent and ketchup sales up 16 percent compared with the same period the week before, according to data from Consumer Edge, a company that tracks consumer behavior.
Although some consumers have been more strategic with their purchases, others might be stockpiling because of uncertainty about which products will be affected by tariffs, and whether companies will raise prices, analysts said.
This seems a remarkably stupid war. American consumers, businesses, farmers, and those who sell seafood know how important China is to us. According to the World Bank, more than 17 percent of the goods we import come from China. And, incidentally, of the two other countries Trump has recently targeted and enraged, Mexico provides close to 14 percent of our imports, and Canada provides more than 13 percent. As for China in 2022, 16 percent of what China exports goes to the United States. A tariff trade war serves no one.
Trump imagines that only he can get away with inflicting needless pain and that by virtue of his imagined strengths as a negotiator, he will automatically prevail. But his ego and shortsightedness invariably cause him to underestimate those he harms. China, for example. As The New York Times reports:
The United States was the biggest single-country market for Chinese goods before the latest tariffs, but the Chinese government had been working for years to diversify its export markets, in part to hedge against rising tensions with Washington.
Since the latest escalation, China has been working furiously to shore up those ties with other countries, both to send a message that it will not be isolated, and to cast itself as a reliable alternative to an unpredictable America. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, hosted the prime minister of Spain earlier this month, and he toured several Southeast Asian countries last week. In Vietnam, Mr. Xi called on other countries to join with China in defending free trade and ‘an open and cooperative international environment.’ In Malaysia, he urged the region to ‘reject decoupling, supply disruption’ and ‘tariff abuse.’ Chinese state media on Monday also highlighted remarks from Britain’s top budget official who said that cutting ties with China would be ‘foolish.’ And Chinese officials have been reaching out to officials from the European Union, Japan and South Korea.
Meanwhile, as The Washington Post reminds us, Americans have become used to buying what the Chinese produce:
The Washington Post explains:
President Donald Trump’s trade war with China has escalated even as other countries got a partial reprieve, threatening the relationship between U.S. manufacturers and retailers and one of America’s largest trading partners. China is the second largest exporter of goods into the United States, sending nearly $439 billion worth of products into the country in 2024, including cereal bowls, scissors, smartphones and shoes. ‘China is a critical trade partner in goods and services because China is the world’s manufacturing floor,’ said Scott Kennedy, trustee chair in Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. ‘It’s an outsized relationship.’
The Post breaks down by category the share of goods we get from China:
Because ordinary Americans are without any power to control tariff policy, and with a Republican Congress too busy bending over to kiss the ring to exercise the Article I, Section 8 powers the Constitution grants them, Donald Trump has been free to tank the economy and propel us all into a financial disaster.
Sadly, there is no rational explanation for why we are in this mess. Why many smart people find themselves wondering if 1929 is just around the corner. A more rational president would focus on the ever-increasing financial deficit. Why are we continuing to spend far more money than we are bringing in? Sure to be made worse by the Trump administration’s unwavering commitment to continue massive tax breaks for the wealthiest and DOGE’s decision to fire those at the Internal Revenue Service and Department of Justice once empowered to find and prosecute those who game the system and refuse to pay their fair share to the mix. As the rest of the world knows, fighting a tariff trade war against Europe, Canada, Mexico, and China is already a completely unnecessary and self-fulfilling disaster.
The global economy will slow sharply this year, weighed down by President Donald Trump’s imposition of the highest import taxes in more than a century and the cloud of uncertainty that has billowed in their wake, the International Monetary Fund said Tuesday. ‘Global growth will downshift to an annual rate of 2.8 percent, half a percentage point lower than projected in January and a significant slowdown,’ the fund said. Only a tepid rebound to 3 percent growth is likely in 2026, leaving the world economy’s expanding for the next two years well below its long-run average of 3.7 percent, according to the fund. Progress on bringing inflation under control also will be hurt.
Trump’s double-barreled tariff plan — a 10 percent tax on nearly everything the United States imports each year plus significantly higher levies on goods from dozens of nations — will hurt the United States and its trading partners, the fund said. But the slowdown will be particularly sharp for the U.S. economy, which will grow this year at an annual rate of 1.8 percent, one third lower than its January estimate and a full percentage point below last year’s mark, the fund said.
‘The landscape has quickly changed,’ said Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, the IMF’s chief economist. ‘We are entering a new era as the global economic system that has operated for the last 80 years is being reset.’
[Emphasis added.]
What exactly changed for us all except the election of Donald Trump? Say what you will about Joe Biden, but he did surround himself with smart and rational people. In fact, none of Mexico’s or Canada’s or even China’s trade policies have changed all that much. So far as I remember, except for those convinced that the Biden economy was ushering in Armageddon, few of us were hoarding canned green beans under Biden.
Let’s look back to the recent campaign. How many people were focused on the price of eggs, the media’s symbol of how the economy just wasn’t working. Do you remember the promises Donald Trump made?
U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas gathered some of them:
August 9, 2024, NBC Montana, Trump Rally in Bozeman, YouTube: ‘Starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again, to bring down the prices of all goods.’
August 17, 2024, PBS Newshour, Trump Rally in North Carolina, YouTube: @ 18:05 ‘Energy is going to bring us back. That means we’re going down and getting gasoline below $2 a gallon, bring down the price of everything from electricity rates to groceries, airfares, and housing costs.’
September 29, 2024, Speech: Donald Trump Holds a Campaign Rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, Roll Call September 29, 2024): ‘Starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again. We’ll do that. We’ve got to bring it down.’
But as The Huffington Post wrote just a month after election day: “Trump Backtracks On Campaign Pledge To Bring Down Grocery Prices.” They wrote:
The president-elect walked back what was always a wildly unrealistic campaign promise. President-elect Donald Trump admitted in an interview with Time magazine that it will be difficult for him to reduce consumer prices, contrary to statements he made on the campaign trail this year. Trump told Time … ‘I’d like to bring them down. It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard. But I think that they will,’ Trump said,
Just maybe Donald Trump hasn’t been shopping in decades. Politifact wrote:
As President Donald Trump promoted his tariff hikes in an April 2 Rose Garden address, he veered back to a favorite 2024 campaign topic: egg prices. ‘The egg prices came down 50%,’ he said, praising Agriculture Secretary Brooke L. Rollins. ‘You got them down 50% once we got involved, they were going through the sky, the egg prices, they were going through the sky, and you did a fantastic job. Now we have lots of eggs, and they’re much cheaper, down about 59% now, and they’re going down further.’
Really? What is he talking about? Here is what the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) gathered by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis reveals about those eggs:
Here is how the Associated Press put it:
And there is no evidence to support Donald Trump’s pre-election claim about grocery prices or that he would make life more affordable. The Consumer Price Index reveals no evidence that prices have headed downward following his election:
CBS News’ Price Tracker’s list shows the price we pay today for a variety of items compared to the price paid since 2019:
Promises made and never kept. “How is America’s economy faring under Donald Trump?” The Economist asked on April 18, 2025. Their answer:
His announcement of high ‘reciprocal’ tariffs on April 2nd sent markets reeling. A 90-day pause a week later sparked a rally, but nerves are still frayed. Investors fear that Mr Trump’s tariffs, whatever their eventual form, will stoke inflation and depress economic growth. Company bosses, faced with extraordinary economic uncertainty, are delaying investments and issuing warnings about future earnings. Consumers are downcast too. Expectations about the economy’s short-term health are at a 12-year low. Until recently, such pessimism was mainly found in Democratic-leaning parts of the country; now the gloom is evident among Republicans too.
At first, Wall Street cheered Mr Trump’s victory. But today shares are below where they were on election day, owing to fears that the president’s tariffs will increase costs and squeeze margins. The administration has been blasé about the tumbling stockmarket. Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, has called such corrections ‘healthy’ and ‘normal’. The president himself has said that there will be a ‘period of transition’ while his painful economic policies take effect.
Carl Quintanilla of CNBC offers this look at how the Magnificent Seven, the seven high-powered tech stocks, have done during this period:
There is something surreal about Trump’s decision to punish the very places in which corporate America has sought refuge. I mean the heads of multinational corporations weren’t really hiding their profit-making decisions to offshore the manufacturing of products they once made in America. We all watched them move jobs to the places where they could pay workers less. Hadn’t we watched the very General Electric (GE) jobs that built a healthy middle class in Pittsfield disappear—this despite the fact GE’s workers worked hard and worked well? First, the transformer jobs and consumer products went south to where there weren’t unions, and then some went abroad to countries unbothered by regulation.
The New York Times adds its less emotional version:
… the economic story of the American 21st century has also been shaped by the deliberate pursuit of freer trade in the hope of lower prices, with the knowledge that doing so would put U.S. manufacturing employment at risk.
It is a problem that the rules of Donald Trump’s tariff policy keep changing by the minute. For example, when the Liberation Day list of tariffs for most countries produced a cataclysmic loss of wealth for many Americans and our bond markets began to crash, Donald Trump’s oft-repeated pledge not to pause these tariffs (and not to cave) quickly transformed itself into a 90-day pause.
Yes, the very car seat, iPhone, green bean panic buying that the Times reported on prompted Donald Trump to issue yet another tariff clarification on April 11, 2025, creating exceptions to his escalated China tariffs.
As The New York Times explained on April 12, 2025:
The Trump administration published a rule late Friday night that appeared to exempt smartphones, computers, semiconductors and other electronics from most of the president’s punishing tariffs on China, giving tech companies like Apple and Dell a break from levies that threatened to upend their businesses and increase prices for consumers … The exemptions are not a full reprieve. Other tariffs will still apply to electronics and smartphones … The tariff relief was also the latest flip-flop in Mr. Trump’s effort to rewrite global trade in a bid to boost U.S. manufacturing …
[Emphasis added.]
“Flip-flop” is a more-than-kind description considering the dreadful stakes for so many around the world. Meanwhile, here at home, ordinary Americans watched some of their retirement funds disappear into some inexplicable dark hole. As FOX News reported on April 22, 2025:
U.S. stock markets had a good day Tuesday, rising an average of just over two-and-a-half percent on the hope that tariffs will be negotiated. The Dow was up over 1,000 points, the NASDAQ increased by almost 430 points and the S&P 500 was up about 130 points. Nonetheless, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is looking to have its worst performance since the Great Depression almost a century ago. Despite some dramatic gains, most of the markets that drive retirement accounts and college savings plans have taken a plunge …
Former Wall Street investment banker and former Dean of Golden Gate University’s School of Business Terry Connelly sees it this way. ‘It gets quite volatile and that’s, that’s hard for the average person who is invested in stocks or bonds,’ Connelly said. ‘It’s like trying to predict a tornado without the weather bureau.’ … Assuming their investments are spread across the three major stock indexes as well as bonds, here’s how much folks have lost, as of Tuesday’s close, from their 401(k) retirement accounts based on Empower Investments averages. These numbers are grouped by age: 20s: $11,000; 30s: $23,000; 40s: $47,000; 50s: $76,000; 60s: $74,000; 70s: $48,000; 80s: $43,000. Older folks, mostly in retirement, are reeling from their losses, since their ability to back fill is unlikely, and they are spending what they have. ‘They’re having to take out and live on their IRA distributions,’ said Connelly.
[Emphasis added.]
Meanwhile, the on-again, off-again tariffs helped some of the wealthiest investors, who might have been given notice that Trump was planning his pause. When they decided to buy low, they quickly became even wealthier as they watched the markets surge back up. You can add another flip-flop when Trump announced he hadn’t really changed his mind about the tariffs he still loved and clarified that his announced regime of a 125 percent tariff on goods from China was in actuality a 145 percent tariff—yes, you had to include the previously announced penalties for China’s inability to stop fentanyl imports. Then, reminding the world that the initial 10 percent tariffs for just about everybody else still remained. Not surprisingly, the markets quickly surrendered some of its previous gains.
From the very beginning, the Trump administration insisted his tariff policy would bring back America’s manufacturing jobs and restore American greatness. And it didn’t take long for Donald Trump to declare “Manufacturing Is Roaring Back” when some corporations announced they would invest some more in America.
Factcheck.org examined some of what Donald Trump claimed on March 7 in the Oval Office:
The president compared the 9,000 new auto manufacturing jobs in February to a loss of more than 27,000 jobs in President Joe Biden’s last year — ignoring that there was a net gain of those jobs over Biden’s entire term. He also suggested that his tariff policy was responsible for the new jobs, but Trump’s tariffs had not yet been enacted in the period covered by the jobs report.
He claimed to be ‘presiding over a brand-new domestic manufacturing boom after major collapse under Biden,’ but an expert told us he’s been in office for too short of a time to have effected any major economic change. And the data show there was a net gain in manufacturing jobs during Biden’s administration.
Trump cherry-picked data to misleadingly claim that ‘1 in every 4 jobs created in America was a government job’ in Biden’s last two years as president, while ‘93% of all job gains’ during the first full month of Trump’s second term ‘were in the private sector.’ During Biden’s entire presidency, about 11% of the jobs added were government jobs, the vast majority of which were state and local government jobs.
In “Bringing Manufacturing Back To The US: Easier Said Than Done,” Guankai Zhai wrote for Forbes in August 2024:
One of the most significant hurdles in reshoring manufacturing is the cost differential between the U.S. and countries like China, Vietnam and Mexico. Labor costs in these countries are substantially lower than in the United States. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average manufacturing worker in the U.S. earns almost $30 per hour as of mid-2024, compared to roughly $7 per hour in China and even less in other developing nations. This stark difference in labor costs translates into cheaper products for consumers and higher profit margins for companies.
Moreover, the cost of production encompasses more than just wages. It includes the expenses associated with regulatory compliance, environmental standards and workplace safety. While these regulations are crucial for protecting workers and the environment, they also add to the overall cost of manufacturing. Countries with less stringent regulations can produce goods more cheaply, further incentivizing companies to maintain their operations abroad … The global supply chain is an intricate web of suppliers, manufacturers and distributors that has evolved over decades. Companies have optimized their supply chains to minimize costs and maximize efficiency, often relying on just-in-time manufacturing to reduce inventory costs. Relocating manufacturing back to the U.S. would require a complete overhaul of these well-established supply chains.
John MacGhlionn of The Hill takes it one step further:
In truth, a large-scale initiative to revitalize American manufacturing would likely backfire. The impact would reach far beyond higher prices at the checkout line. Consumers already weighed down by housing costs, debt and rising prices would experience even greater strain. But there’s another cost — one that rarely gets mentioned. The environmental toll. Bringing back large-scale manufacturing means bringing back the smog, the industrial runoff, the poisoned rivers and the toxic waste that Americans spent decades outsourcing. The U.S. didn’t just offshore manufacturing for cheap labor; it offshored pollution. China, Mexico and Southeast Asia have, for years, shouldered the environmental burden of American consumption …
The factory worker of the 1960s had a high school diploma, a predictable job, and an expectation of lifelong employment. That world is gone. Today’s manufacturing demands specialized skills — robotics, programming and precision engineering. The U.S. has spent decades pushing students away from trades and technical fields. Now, there’s a skilled labor shortage. Who’s filling all these repatriated jobs? Foreign labor? That undermines the entire MAGA premise.
Ironically, Abha Bhattarai writes The Washington Post:
President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff-driven reversal of decades of free trade is creating financial chaos for the very sector it’s meant to rebuild: American manufacturing.
Although the full extent of economic damage is still unclear, volatile tariff policies are making it tougher for American companies to make and sell goods, whether they’re producing medical devices in Florida, toys in Ohio or bicycles in California … The odds of a recession have spiked in recent weeks. The value of the dollar has tumbled, and Treasury yields have climbed, as investors abandon both, worried about the reliability of the U.S. government.
Three articles in the April 24, 2025, edition of The New York Times reveal how completely unnecessary, counterproductive, and stupid Donald Trump has been. David Sanger writes in “On Major Economic Decisions, Trump Blinks, and Then Blinks Again”:
After weeks of bluster and escalation, President Trump blinked. Then he blinked again. And again.
He backed off his threat to fire the Federal Reserve chairman. His Treasury secretary, acutely aware that the S&P 500 was down 10 percent since Mr. Trump was inaugurated, signaled he was looking for an offramp to avoid an intensifying trade war with China.
And now Mr. Trump has acknowledged that the 145 percent tariffs on Chinese goods that he announced just two weeks ago are not sustainable. He was prompted in part by the warnings of senior executives from Target and Walmart and other large American retailers that consumers would see price surges and empty shelves for some imported goods within a few weeks …
He entered this trade war imagining a simpler era in which imposing punishing tariffs would force companies around the world to build factories in the United States. He ends the month discovering that the world of modern supply chains is far more complex than he bargained for, and that it is far from clear his ‘beautiful’ tariffs will have the effects he predicted.
People all over America know, in a way no one in the Trump administration seems willing to acknowledge, how much this war has and will cost them. And the attorneys general of 12 states just acted on that knowledge:
A dozen states, most of them led by Democrats, sued President Trump over his tariffs on Wednesday, arguing that he has no power to ‘arbitrarily impose tariffs as he has done here.’ Contending that only Congress has the power to legislate tariffs, the states are asking the court to block the Trump administration from enforcing what they said were unlawful tariffs.
‘These edicts reflect a national trade policy that now hinges on the president’s whims rather than the sound exercise of his lawful authority,’ said the lawsuit, filed by the states’ attorneys general in the U.S. Court of International Trade.” … Officials and businesses from Oregon, the lead plaintiff in the suit filed Wednesday, have also expressed concerns about the vulnerability of the state’s trade-dependent economy, as well as its sportswear industry, as a result of the tariffs.
‘When a president pushes an unlawful policy that drives up prices at the grocery store and spikes utility bills, we don’t have the luxury of standing by,’ said Dan Rayfield, Oregon’s attorney general, in a statement. ‘These tariffs hit every corner of our lives — from the checkout line to the doctor’s office — and we have a responsibility to push back.’
And, finally, yet another lie has come back to haunt the administration which has tried to calm the financial markets by exaggerating the success of the Trump tariff policy. Well, China has made it clear it is not willing to participate in the deception:
The Times writes in “Markets Fade as China Calls Reports of U.S. Tariff Talks ‘Baseless’“:
Markets slipped on Thursday, reversing some of the gains from a heady two-day rally, after officials in China said they were not holding talks with the United States about easing trade tensions between the superpowers. Stocks in Asia were mixed, while benchmarks in Europe turned mostly lower in early trading. Futures for the S&P 500 fell about half a percent, suggesting that stocks would open lower in New York. The index has seesawed this week as investors reacted to comments about trade from President Trump, with a sharp sell-off on Monday followed by two days of sizable gains.
‘There are currently no economic and trade negotiations between China and the United States,’ He Yadong, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Commerce, said on Thursday. ‘Any claims about progress in China-U.S. economic and trade negotiations are baseless rumors without factual evidence.’ A spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Guo Jiakun, reiterated China’s stance, which is that the tariff war was started by the United States and that China would only engage in talks under certain conditions. ‘China’s attitude is consistent and clear: If you want to fight, we will fight to the end; if you want to talk, the door is open,’ he said.
Meanwhile, as we suffer, the rest of the world is moving on, talking amongst themselves, looking for far-more-reliable trading partners. And the man who hired someone else to write “The Art of the Deal” has proven himself to be a dreadful deal-breaker. And in the process, he has has tanked the American economy.
