Trump Has Only Two Ways Out Of This Tariff Hell He’s Built For Himself

We know we have a lunatic in the White House. That’s not new information. But recent events have given us the opportunity for real insight into what makes Trump tick and why he keeps pushing this insane tariffs agenda, in the face of all the negative polls that have been coming out. The recent CNN poll finds that Trump’s overall approval is at 45 percent to 54 percent. Approval of Trump’s handling of the economy is worse at 44 to 56. On tariffs, it’s 39 to 61. Why would he push through with tariffs on these facts — not to mention that Americans are cringing, worrying about the retaliatory tariffs, which are a normal part of any trade war?

The reason is to be found in the complex way that Trump *thinks.* Primarily, tariffs do two things that he likes and that’s how he got on this bandwagon to begin with. First, they put money into the pockets of the rich and take money from the people on the bottom, who can least afford it. That appeals to him. But what really appeals to him is that it makes him seem like a real tough guy. He’s going to stick it to these other countries who have been “taking advantage” of America. And that’s the part he can’t let go of, the strongman persona. And then there’s a third thing, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are telling him he can be the most consequential president ever, because they want him to take the country into neofeudalism, where we’re all serfs to a few overlords. So that’s the fantasy. But the reality of what tariffs actually are versus his sales pitch about what they are is starting to get out of control. The markets are going nuts and even Fox News is in rebellion. This is where the rubber meets the road, as they say.

Marcotte: Yes, there is a big disconnect. Usually, I feel like I have a good read on what kind of delusions Trump is under, but he’s so angry and baffled that I almost wonder if he actually had half-convinced himself that tariffs were good, that they actually would do all the miraculous things that he promises they will do. It’s fascinating because everyone knows that tariffs are a sales tax. I always assumed that that was why Trump wants to impose them—because he’s a rich guy who wants to move the tax burden off of rich people and onto poor people. Maybe he’s beginning to realize, especially with other Republican pushback, that his endless and boundless faith that he can bullshit his supporters might hit a limit when their prices start going up because of a tax he imposed.

Sargent: There’s no question about it. The Republican pushback is clearly getting to him. As you say, we should talk about this just for a second because it’s not a small thing. Tariffs are a tax on consumers, and his plan is to redistribute the tax burden to poorer people from richer people, quite literally. He wants to cut taxes on the very rich—continue his tax cuts—and pay for it with the “revenues” from tariffs. He said that straight out, right?

Marcotte: Yeah, and it’s clear that his new friends in the tech bro world are feeding this delusion. They—Elon Musk’s friends—are on Twitter pushing this idea. That’s where his obsession with the late nineteenth and early twentieth century is coming from. It’s coming from these people that are blowing smoke up his ass about it, saying, Yeah, tariffs were the time of this great pre-twentieth-century economy. Well, no. He obviously is bad at math and doesn’t understand that you can’t just replace income taxes with a sales tax, even a really, really high sales tax, for multiple reasons. The amount of revenue generated would never be even close to enough. And that’s not to say the total and absolute economic damage that comes from hitting the people who can least afford it the hardest.

If you read the article linked to here, it goes on to discuss the presser Trump was at where he lashed out at Chuck Schumer — completely out of the blue. The topic was taxes and somehow Schumer being “a Palestinian” became the topic of the moment — when Trump wasn’t abusing reporters for asking perfectly reasonable questions. Amanda Marcotte, the interviewee, was asked, “When Trump’s feeling vulnerable and worried, he thinks he can project strength to his people, to his base, by abusing someone viciously as he does here. What do you think?”

Marcotte: It’s telling that he was being asked about tax policy and he went off on calling Chuck Schumer “Palestinian.” And he’s getting worse about this. Chuck Schumer is confronting him on a tax policy issue and he just starts spouting this stuff because he hears the word “Schumer”; he’s almost like a bot, coming up with these insults. It might be effective to a certain extent on his base because a lot of them have also “self-botted.” It’s a series of impulses that are removed from anything like thought process or rationality, a bunch of emotions totally unorganized by anything resembling reason now, and it’s getting worse all the time. But for everyone else, it’s like, What are you talking about, man?

This is the programming of Donald Trump. He’s like an AI program, the minute the questions require actual answers, he just pivots to something completely unrelated and attacks somebody unrelated to the topic, like a rabid dog will attack anybody who’s around.

Sargent: He snapped at two other reporters as well. He said, “That’s enough,” to one of them who asked about the markets—also telling. And he angrily asked another reporter who brought up Trump’s discussion of removing Palestinians of Gaza, “Who are you with?” When she said Voice of America, he angrily said, “No wonder.” MAGA is really angry at Voice of America right now, but again, these are reasonable questions to ask Trump. I keep asking myself, how is this supposed to appeal to any swing voter or moderate voter who’s worried about the chaos they’re seeing in Washington? I know Trump thinks he’s got magical propaganda and magical lying powers, but he’s got to sense that this is not going to reassure people, no?

Marcotte: That’s why I think he’s freaking out, right? My sense of what’s going on with him is that he’s more sheltered from outside information than he ever has been before. It seems increasingly clear to me, especially when you look at his schedule, that he’s spending a lot more time sheltered in a little bubble surrounded by friends and advisers who are doing a North Korea–style everything-is-good-news thing because nobody wants to give him the bad news. When he’s confronted with certain realities, like this is not going well, people do not like Elon Musk, you’re going to cause a recession and there’s no way you can hide that fact, I think he’s starting to sweat it because the cognitive dissonance is probably worse than ever before with him.

I think Marcotte is spot on. He is living in an information bubble — as Volodymyr Zelensky accurately pointed out — and he’s only coming out of that bubble to do photo ops and pitch his impossible dreams. But he has to see the handwriting on the wall because even his beloved Fox News is begging him to stand down with this idiocy.

Marcotte: There’s two modes on Fox News; Media Matters had a really good article about this. You have some hosts on Fox News who are, again, working like palace advisers of a North Korean or other totalitarian government, telling fragile dear leader that there’s nothing wrong, that recession fears aren’t real, that everything’s great, that his plans are perfect, nothing is ever going to go wrong. Then you have other hosts who recognize that the one thing you can’t BS people about is inflation and crashing stock markets and things like that, and they’re on TV basically begging him to stop. Laura Ingram had a segment where she was saying, Please, please don’t do this, knowing that talking to him through the TV is the only way to get his attention.

It’s really striking because I think that there’s a self-interested aspect [to] this. What’s interesting about what he’s threatening to do to the economy will hurt almost everybody very badly—not just working class people but everybody, including rich people [who will] lose a lot of money when the stock market crashes. There’s a self-interest aspect there with the Fox News host, but I also think that they recognize that the Republican Party could be in very real danger if they continue down this path.

Trump has painted himself into a corner. So what is he going to do? Because this trade war is ill advised and it absolutely is not going to result in great wealth for the average American. That is sheer fantasy. And even Trump can’t BS his base that they’re going to be wealthy very soon if they see that they’re paying 30% or more for everything, the 401ks are going down in value, and there’s a lot of unemployment. Things like that cannot be disguised. So what will he do?

Marcotte: He has, in the past, been convinced to save face by backing down when he gets into these spirals. Especially in the last term, there were people who understood that his strongest desire is to save face. As long as he had some face-saving excuse like Oh, I won the tariff war, declare victory, let’s move on, he would do that. He’s a lot older now. He was never an emotionally continent person to begin with, obviously, and it’s getting worse. It’s definitely getting worse. I’m not a doctor, I couldn’t say, but this happens to a lot of people as they age. Their impulse control gets much worse, and he doesn’t have as many people around him to steer him in the right direction. On the contrary, he seems to be spending all his time with Elon Musk, who is taking advantage of this entire situation to manipulate the old man.

Sargent: And Elon Musk is very good at that. Elon Musk really knows how to pump up Trump. And I wonder whether the assassination attempts that he survived as well as the comeback, which was really startling, reinforced the sense in him that he can basically get away with whatever he wants. And yet here again, there’s a nuance, right? He clearly is getting very angry that he can’t get away with whatever he wants.

I think two things will happen. This is just off the top of my head, but it makes sense if you know how Trump *thinks.* I think Elon Musk will become the fall guy. Trump needs a fall guy and Musk will become his. And I think that Trump will somehow spin the trade war and the tariffs as a win, even though to do so will be laughable. But he will go through this routine. It’s all about saving face and looking like he’s a hotshot. He’ll find some way to spin it.

And I don’t even think it’s going to take very long. We could be having a very different conversation in thirty days from what we’re having today. Musk is unpopular, he’s under pressure from his legitimate business interests to devote his time to them and not the DOGE fiasco, and Trump has to have an out on this ill advised trade war that he’s cobbled together. Plus, Trump could do real damage to the rest of the Republican party if he causes a recession and they all know that.

Finally, no matter how all this depresses you, bear in mind that while there’s all this frou frou about Trump’s amazing comeback and there’s the MAGA spin that he won by a landslide, that he emphatically did not. He’s a very unpopular president. Always was. He got back in by 1.5%. And now it looks like he’s in a position to really bury himself good. The only question is, how much damage will he do to the rest of us before he self implodes?

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