Patience, Grasshopper

America is suddenly awash in economics experts, much as it was filled with armchair generals when the war in Ukraine began and criminal lawyers during the BLM riots and J6. There is nothing quite like a set of talking points issued from one’s team to instill a sense of self-righteousness in promoting a particular argument, whether it passes the logic test or not.

The various spins of Trump’s tariff talk are dizzying – it will spark a global recession, it will reshore manufacturing, it will make everything more expensive, and it will make your babies be born naked. Okay, Orange McBadman cannot impact the last point, but you get the drift. The certainty with which people hold their positions is equally impressive and frightening, particularly when the ground surrounding the issue shifts daily.

Take Ursula van der Leyen, Queen of the EU, who is now offering zero-for-zero tariffs with the US. This is markedly different from Ursula’s initial reaction to Trump’s call for universal tariffs, which she said would bring “immense consequences” that would cause the global economy to “massively suffer.” There is nothing unusual about a political figure doing a 180, but her conflicting statements come off as disingenuous when you listen closely to her current stance and how the EU deploys zero-for-zero “with other trading partners.”

So, what prevented that approach from being used with America all along? What stopped it from being proposed immediately as Trump was going into tariff mode to head off the predictable hysteria that followed his announcement? It’s almost as if Trump is onto something in claiming that the US is often taken advantage of in trade. It may then be useful to spend a minute considering whether tariffs are a means or an end.

The panic today is reminiscent of ‘expert’ analysis 40 years ago, when the Reagan plan of tax cuts and slowing the growth of govt spending went into effect. Because the tax cuts did not spark an instant boom, the president was urged to change course. He refused to budge. What followed is what followed. I have no idea what the result of the current discussion will be, nor does anyone else, least of all the hired talking heads who speak with such self-assuredness without disclosing their self-interest in the stock market’s daily activity.

Making sense of the tariff talk requires stepping out of the vacuum, meaning it is not a stand-alone topic. Tariffs tie in with DOGE and paying attention to how public money is allocated and spent. Is anyone really surprised that this effort has found waste and graft? Is anyone truly shocked that the govt has spent money whose expenditure was largely unknown to most of us?

Whether one likes or dislikes this president is immaterial; anyone who pays taxes is affected when their money is misused, funneled to cronies, or used on things that are objectionable, like overthrowing govts the cabal does not like. I am also not sure the outrage – phony outrage? – is exclusive to people with advanced TDS. The habit of supporting or opposing ideas because of who proposes them rather than what they intend to accomplish did not start with this man’s election, though it has gotten exponentially more severe.

Having productive discussions is predicated on the participants working from the same set of facts. That is not the case with tariffs. Here are two examples: Forbes sees a US administration upsetting the global order in a time of American dominance, while Newsweek is reporting on the massive investments pledged by domestic and foreign companies. Many things come with pros and cons, but those are typically weighed against each other in making decisions. That’s not happening here. Even the Newsweek piece largely buries the lede, agonizing over a series of potential “what if” situations before naming companies and their planned investments.

This is doubly frustrating when the Oval Office repeatedly sends out signals that suggest tariffs are a means, not an end. Otherwise, there would not be repeated pauses on implementation, the most recent coming just two days ago. To anyone not driven by hatred of the man, it reads like Trump’s aim to make a point that gets people’s attention. He has succeeded. Some countries reflexively responded with retaliatory measures; both Japan and India stayed calm and are either working on solutions or planning trips to DC to find common ground. That’s how negotiations work, and whatever else Trump is, a negotiator is a key element of it.

The situation is muddied by an instant gratification culture that seeks convenient and easy answers where those do not apply. The market hiccups and they freak out. Gas prices move a dime one way or the other, and partisans instantly blame or credit the president who had nothing to do with it. Translation services for the National Weather Service are on hold because the contract with the vendor expired, but the headlines treat this as a termination rather than a blip, and people react to the headline because reading the stories is hard.

If you want a clearer view of how off the rails things are, consider what a group called the Network Contagion Research Institute learned. Its study found what the authors call an assassination culture in which an alarming number of people justify killing the objects of their political discontent. It became visible with the reaction to a health insurance company CEO being murdered on a New York street, and it has increased in intensity regarding Trump and Elon Musk.

Since the summer of 2020, there has been an acceptance in some quarters of violence for the sake of political goals. That has been manifested today with the Tesla attacks, something that 40% of poll respondents favor. Let that roll around for a second. Further consider that not one politician or talking head on the left has talked about dialing down the temperature. Not one. There is a saying about silence being tantamount to approval over time, so what happens when violence for the sake of a political outcome becomes normalized and tolerated?

None of us knows how the tariff bit will turn out. None of us is privy to internal discussions that are mapping out whatever strategy is being used. What most of us do know is that a majority of voters wanted meaningful change. That cannot be limited only to things that we want while paring our sacred cows. There will be discomfort. The country is flirting with insolvency, parts of its workforce are demoralized, and very few have a fond view of globalists. In other words, let’s see what happens so that if there are gripes, at least they are based on reality rather than conjecture.