What if Trump's tariffs never had anything to do with protecting American industry, at all? What if they were in fact a vehicle for a Trump extortion scheme, wherein he planned to extract concessions from foreign governments whose industries were under pressure, by enticing them with a removal of the very same tariffs he installed in the first place?
Yeah, to be honest I think the simplest explanation is still the best one. Tariffs are among Trump's biggest, possibly only, ideological preferences (everything else is best described as "I don't care as long as I'm on top"). And, for understanding, as far as I see he isn't against free trade per se, but against what he perceives unfair trade policy (though his definition of unfair is rather wide). But he is also a populist and wants a strong economy. Taken together, he starts out with significant tariffs but gets easily spooked by the stock markets and talked into this or that cut-out by industry lobbyists.
The hidden explanatory or causal variable is the principal owners who actually are the puppeteers-the broligarchy techno owners of tech capital and financial investment (hedge funds, VC, blockholder founders of largest AI firms creating the massive AI (and crypto bubble) run economic “policy”
"Yes and", perhaps... I think the industrial workers are the ones who want protectionism, but the tech workers want globalization. So it is not just the bosses - the voters themselves might be getting the different policies they want...
From the perspective of myself and the USA's Old Republic, the author here (not trying to knock him, BTW) writes without mentioning that the United States of the 1930s operated under an entirely different institutional brain than the post-1970s system that developed over the post WW2 transformation decades. For example, his statement re “the highest tariffs since the 1930s” assumes continuity where there is very little, the 1930s existed within the last decades of the Old Republic’s decentralized, diffused capital with pluralistic capital formation and structures, federated decision making architecture, etc; today’s tariffs exist inside a fully financialized, deeply legally and regulatory harmonized (via central direction), globally integrated technocratic order whose operating logic is the opposite of that earlier world. He does get at how just one policy's effect cannot be considered without looking at all the rest of policies, BUT, he does not get at how a policy effects cannot be compared across entirely different decision making architectures, he treats tariffs in 1930 and 2025 as if they were equivalent instruments producing equivalent meanings.
And quites ironically, even if Trump has no coherent doctrine, the author is correct, one way or another. Trump’s AI carve-outs, his willingness to empower Nvidia and Sacks as de facto planners, and his obsession with stock-market optics in a deeply centralized financial system, all amount to a continuation of deep consolidation and intensive economic central planning, albeit in chaotic, factionalized form. In structural terms, this is simply another version of capital "G" Globalization’s core logics, so yes, at least in effective terms, either way, he is a “globalist”
What if Trump's tariffs never had anything to do with protecting American industry, at all? What if they were in fact a vehicle for a Trump extortion scheme, wherein he planned to extract concessions from foreign governments whose industries were under pressure, by enticing them with a removal of the very same tariffs he installed in the first place?
Exactly... JD is getting rich selling off farming operations. Trump has no policy. He just does what enriches him.
He also does it to extract concessions from domestic purchasers!
That’s part of it for sure, look at Brazil and his buddy Balsonaro 🤨
Yeah, to be honest I think the simplest explanation is still the best one. Tariffs are among Trump's biggest, possibly only, ideological preferences (everything else is best described as "I don't care as long as I'm on top"). And, for understanding, as far as I see he isn't against free trade per se, but against what he perceives unfair trade policy (though his definition of unfair is rather wide). But he is also a populist and wants a strong economy. Taken together, he starts out with significant tariffs but gets easily spooked by the stock markets and talked into this or that cut-out by industry lobbyists.
The hidden explanatory or causal variable is the principal owners who actually are the puppeteers-the broligarchy techno owners of tech capital and financial investment (hedge funds, VC, blockholder founders of largest AI firms creating the massive AI (and crypto bubble) run economic “policy”
If they ran economic policies there wouldn’t be stupid tariffs on everything else. They aren’t stupid.
"Yes and", perhaps... I think the industrial workers are the ones who want protectionism, but the tech workers want globalization. So it is not just the bosses - the voters themselves might be getting the different policies they want...
From the perspective of myself and the USA's Old Republic, the author here (not trying to knock him, BTW) writes without mentioning that the United States of the 1930s operated under an entirely different institutional brain than the post-1970s system that developed over the post WW2 transformation decades. For example, his statement re “the highest tariffs since the 1930s” assumes continuity where there is very little, the 1930s existed within the last decades of the Old Republic’s decentralized, diffused capital with pluralistic capital formation and structures, federated decision making architecture, etc; today’s tariffs exist inside a fully financialized, deeply legally and regulatory harmonized (via central direction), globally integrated technocratic order whose operating logic is the opposite of that earlier world. He does get at how just one policy's effect cannot be considered without looking at all the rest of policies, BUT, he does not get at how a policy effects cannot be compared across entirely different decision making architectures, he treats tariffs in 1930 and 2025 as if they were equivalent instruments producing equivalent meanings.
And quites ironically, even if Trump has no coherent doctrine, the author is correct, one way or another. Trump’s AI carve-outs, his willingness to empower Nvidia and Sacks as de facto planners, and his obsession with stock-market optics in a deeply centralized financial system, all amount to a continuation of deep consolidation and intensive economic central planning, albeit in chaotic, factionalized form. In structural terms, this is simply another version of capital "G" Globalization’s core logics, so yes, at least in effective terms, either way, he is a “globalist”
This is another instance of TACO in action: Trump always chickens out 🙂