Donald Trump and White House officials walked back a Friday announcement that there would be tariff exemptions on imported electronics.
In a Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump directly denied the tariff exemption announcement.
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“This is really mind-boggling. If this was serious industrial policy, the main thing you want is certainty: ‘Here’s the tariff, it will be in place for the indefinite future, and you should plan accordingly,’” Dean Baker, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a left-leaning think tank, said, according to The Washington Post. “Here, it’s basically: ‘Come back next week and see what we’ve got.’ That’s no way to run an economy.”
I see it more differentiated. He is not a complete idiot. He (and his team) know what they’re doing when he makes outrageous claims about Greenland, China, Panama etc. to have a better position when he offers the country “a good deal”. But when that rather predictable stratagem doesn’t go as planned, they flounder.
We’ve seen it a few times now; at least to me there’s a clear difference between their regular “throwing shit at the wall” tactic, and something like this or Signalgate or JD’s recent visit to Greenland, when it’s just totally clear that things did not go as planned.
There’s no 4D chess here.
I don’t think it’s their intent to destabilize the world market (to what end?), just a simple “grab as much as possible for
ourselvesthe USA”.Putin doesn’t plan so meticulously either, he just backs the guy who’s most likely to destabilize “The West” through his sheer cleptocracy and partial idiocy, if you will.
Also I don’t think anyone’s reaction here is “surprised pikachu” - though I must admit he and his entourage still manage to out-outrage themselves every now and then. And I reserve the right to not normalize Trumplon, i.e. continue to be outraged by it.