Revenge of The King: Trump’s Terrifying Tariffs
These are all the most common theories Ive’ seen online about the cause of Trump’s worldwide tariffs. From most common to least.
- Trump is ignorant about how tariffs affect the economy and he is ignorant on deficits — and economics in general. He thinks they will work when they won’t, and he is doing it to appease his supporters.
That is the most common take I’ve seen, widely held everywhere. The next most common take is also widespread just not quite as much as this one.
2. Trump is brilliant and saving America.
This is pushed vigorously by MAGA supporters, which is a big contingent online.
Both of the above types of answers to “why tariffs?” are typically spoken by political partisans. A lot of people not devoted to a political movement also claim Trump’s tariffs are caused by his ignorance on tariffs, trade deficits, etc. I don’t see how it is credible to believe that Trump is ignorant about that. Still, that is the most common take I’ve seen online. Paul Krugman, a top pundit for the Democrats and a famous economist has repeatedly blamed Trump’s ignorance on economic decisions he makes. He wrote back in February an essay called “The Emperor’s New Tariffs.” His common refrain from the past on Trump’s previous tariffs is that Trump is not only ignorant, but his actual purpose is to appeal to his supporters, to make it look like he is doing something for them.
How hard is it to learn about tariffs and trade deficits? How hard is it to learn how the current economic system works? For an experienced businessman this is all common knowledge. Krugman is being partisan IMHO because of course someone as experienced as Trump who went to the top business school in America, Wharton, of course he knows very simple things like how tariffs work, how deficits work, etc. It is ridiculous to believe that he doesn’t.
When you see mainstream politicians or mainstream businesspeople or mainstream media speaking on these topics, they commonly seem to be ignorant on: how the world really works. That fools a lot of people into believing they are speaking or writing about their true views. Let’s face facts:
Very rich Americans and the economists and politicians working for them set up the worldwide monetary system at Bretton Woods, NH near the end of WWII — in order to enable their dominance over the world’s economy as much as they thought possible by 1) Making the dollar the reserve currency, and 2) Creating the World Bank, IMF, etc. in a way that the very rich American upper class would be enabled to dominate over the world. When Nixon ended the ability to get gold for dollars in 1971, the Nixon Shock, the new dollar backed monetary system supercharged their ability to economically dominate the world because the dollar became as good as gold — and they were in control of creating and controlling dollars that everyone needed, because 3) They made a deal that they would protect the leaders of the biggest oil producers in the world in the Middle East (aka a protection racket) if they only sold oil for dollars.
Economist Michael Hudson wrote a famous book explaining how it worked called Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance. When it first came out, he was asked by top American military leaders to visit them to explain how it worked. Why? Because it is not spoken about in “polite society” aka mainstream media and schools. Marine General Smedley Butler years earlier famously said “War is a racket” in a speech and short book in 1935. He explained that when he was sent to fight “wars” that he realized that he was not fighting for “America” but was instead being employed as what would be famously coined years later by John Perkins in his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. General Butler said he was fighting for the agenda of various very rich businesspeople from the American upper class to exploit the people and land of other nations for the profiteering of very rich Americans, not for American “security interests” writ large.
So even though politicians and businesspeople speak or write publicly as if they don’t know the actual purpose of American politics — mostly to serve the interests of very rich people — they in fact do know or they would not be platformed by mainstream media outlets or given lots of money to run for high office. That is why we saw some famous journalists or politicians shunned by the mainstream media — they spoke the truth in public, e.g., Seymour Hersh, Matt Taibbi, Tulsi Gabbard, and of course, yes — El Presidente Donaldo “El Jefe Mejor” Trump. Why did the entire American establishment originally oppose Trump? Because he spoke truth while his opponents were stuck to the traditional fairy tale version of what is allowable to say about American politics in the mainstream, i.e., American politicians only serve the common good and everything America does is good and holy. Trump crossed that line and said no, “you think our country is so innocent?”
3. Trump is pretending to care about America’s working class but in reality this is a scheme cooked up to benefit the rich by using money from tariffs to replace the money lost from his upcoming tax breaks for the rich.
That version of “why tariffs?” I’ve seen from people who are not devoted partisans of a political party and who also don’t think Trump is ignorant — usually from people on the far-left who see politics in America as a game of “rich people vs the working class,” e.g., self-defined Democratic Socialists, regular Socialists, Anarchists, Marxists, etc. I’ve also seen that view from many self-defined Libertarians or “Classical Liberals” e.g., people enamored of LaRouchian ideas and other similar types who are commonly derided as conspiracy theorists by mainstream media and politicians. Those types of people typically believe: the rich elites and their paid off politicians are always trying to exploit the working class regardless of what they say are their goals or priorities, only the ignorant or the paid off people say they believe otherwise. Economists on the far-left commonly support this idea, and even if they don’t say they believe it this view is commonly held by most serious leftists.
4. Trump is pretending aka The Madman Theory of politics.
I’ve seen this promoted much less than the previous theories. The idea is that Trump’s tariffs are a tactic in a larger strategy to make other nations believe that Trump is irrational so they will give in because: he doesn’t care/understand the reality of the situation and that makes him dangerously unstable enough to destroy the world economy. Therefore even if what he wants from your nation will economically damage Americans or himself, he cannot and will not take that threat seriously because he is A MADMAN! They think it’s like the old good cop — bad cop routine: one of the cops acts like he has to be held back from attacking the suspect because he is a crazed madman. The idea is to make the suspect afraid of his own safety, make him believe that if he tells the good cop what he knows then he will protect him from the madman cop who is so crazy he doesn’t care if he gets in trouble for physically harming the suspect.
The problem with this is that Trump is seen by world leaders as someone who already did this in the previous Trump administration, so they don’t take this idea seriously now. On the other hand, they can’t be 100% sure that he is not serious, so it still must make them wonder and therefore the possibility that he is a madman gets into their plans.
5. The tariffs are a financial scam perpetuated by Trump or by those advising Trump without him knowing.
I’ve seen this theory less than the above, but a lot of people have said they believe this. Their idea is that Trump and or his advisors know that the tariffs are going to crash a lot of stocks, so they make bets in the stock market to take advantage of their insider information. This is called insider trading and is of course illegal. It still takes place all the time but is difficult to prove because if there is no paper trail or recordings of people talking about it, all you have is people making suspiciously good choices. This is what many people complain about when politicians make a lot of money by what looks to them like a suspiciously uncommon ability to make smart trades more often than not. Would Trump do that to make money? I’ve seen people argue against that idea saying Trump has a lot of money so why do anything illegal? And because if there is lots of damage to the economy that would also cause his fortune to diminish. Plus, the Democrats did everything they could to try to stop Trump, and because they ended up with jack squat — they had to invent crimes. Therefore, this theory is simply not credible because Trump has never been the type of person to openly do something so illegal. He has always been rich and apparently always law abiding — so why would he do something so out of character just to make more money that he doesn’t even need? Someone else replied that maybe Trump is so angry at what the “elites” did to try to stop him from getting elected that it's not about making money, it's about revenge.
What do I think the truth is? I believe in the least common of all theories, but it’s also what all famous enlightened philosophers of the past have taught us about the nature of everything going on in the world:
