Week 22 - The Return
Experts in authoritarianism advise to keep a list of things subtly changing around you, so you’ll remember.
The main theme of this week’s list is Trump’s tariff war declaration and the global disruption that ensued, but before we get to that, I want to recognize the importance of the Hands Off protests which took place on Saturday. The media was not prepared to adequately cover the size and scope of this protest, which took even its organizers by surprise. I wrote more about why the protests really mattered on my Substack, but I also want to highlight, that as millions took to the streets at more than 1,600 locations, we passed an important hurdle. Many who protested were doing so for the first time, and got to see firsthand that they could do so safely and without incident. Ironically, it was Trump who preemptively erected a fence around the White House on Friday night. Protests have been remarkably effective: just ask Elon Musk who has seen his net worth crumble as Tesla stock continued to plummet following mass protests at showrooms nationwide.
This week it wasn’t only citizens pushing back. We were once again joined by the courts in multiple rulings, and, for the first time, Senate Republicans and business leaders. Republican Senators at long last pushed back on Trump usurping the legislative branch’s powers, hardly a profile in courage at this late date, but a start. Wall Street got a rude awakening this week that Trump does not have a plan or a strategy for the things he does, something anyone who follows this project knew all too well. The money quote this week from Bloomberg News: “There were people who were behind Trump for selfish reasons. Now it’s hit their stock portfolios, and they are saying ‘holy sh-t’ — they didn’t expect he would do it.” Cry me a river. Welcome to our shared reality.
Never in the history of our country have we seen one man unilaterally cause so much global disruption, which seems destined to lead into a global recession. Trump’s so-called Liberation Day, unleashing the highest tariffs since 1909, erased trillions of dollars of U.S. stock market capitalization in a matter of days. By the end of the week, some Wall Street leaders were saying we are heading into a recession, while others said we were already there — a mere ten weeks into Trump’s time in office. As is typical for all Trump did in his first and now second regime, the launch of and aftermath of his so-called Liberation Day were characterized by chaos, mixed messaging, changing goal posts, and complete disarray. I want to also highlight the spike in U.S. Treasury yields, as global investors dumped U.S. Treasuries and sought out other countries as safe havens, a possible harbinger for the end of U.S. exceptionalism, ironically under the man who promised to make America great again. I wrote more about the loss of U.S. exceptionalism, and the corner Trump has backed himself into, here.
While Trump’s chaotic trade war dominated the news cycles this week, there are numerous stories and trends related to federal agencies — the Social Security Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Department of Health and Human Services — that are extremely alarming. The second death of an unvaccinated child amid a growing measles outbreak, and an HHS Secretary who is an anti-vaxxer. The mass exodus from SSA and the IRS, while the latter is in the midst of tax season. I hope you will take the time to read through the items below that indicate the decay of our federal government.
A federal judge ordered the White House to lift what had been a two-month ban on the AP, while a lawsuit plays out, saying the AP has “suffered significant, concrete harms.” The judge, a Trump appointee, cited AP was likely to win its case based on the First Amendment.
Pulitzer prize winning columnist Eugene Robinson left the Post, where he had worked since 1980 and been a columnist since 2005, citing owner Jeff Bezos’s new directive for editorial content.
On Wednesday after the market closed, in what Trump dubbed “Liberation Day,” he announced a baseline tariff of 10% on 190 countries, and shared a chart showing an additional “reciprocal” tariff on 57 countries, claiming trade deficits were a “national emergency.”
Analysts noted the reciprocal tariff percentages seemed to have applied a formula of dividing a country’s trade surplus by its total export value, then multiplying the figure by 0.5, a simplistic methodology that did not differentiate allies from adversaries, and punished some poor nations.
Trump put the highest tariff rate of 50% on Lesotho, a tiny African kingdom with a gross domestic product of just over $2 billion, and a country that Trump said recently “nobody has ever heard of.” Economists said Trump’s tariff would destroy their economy.
Also included in those targeted by reciprocal tariffs were uninhabited islands, islands with tiny populations of fewer than 2,000, and islands populated by penguins and seals. Notably, Russia, North Korea, Belarus, Cuba, and Iran were not hit with any tariffs.