Donald Trump Is Not Invincible
The tariff fiasco illustrates that collective pressure can crack his seemingly immutable agenda
It was just eight days ago when Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick appeared on CNN to display maximum sycophancy to a man whose companies have gone bankrupt six times, including three casinos (for crying out loud).
“Let Donald Trump run the global economy. He knows what he's doing,” Lutnick laughably insisted. “He's been talking about it for 35 years. You gotta trust Donald Trump in the White House...Let Donald Trump fix the American economy.”
This was the morning after Trump stood next to a list of planned tariffs based on fabricated numbers meant to prove that America is “being ripped off.”
And what happened on that Thursday when suck-up Lutnick said we should all trust Donald Trump to run the global economy? The U.S. financial market suffered its biggest one-day loss since June 2020 during the pandemic. The Dow Jones dropped 3.9 percent, the Nasdaq plunged nearly 6 percent and the S&P 500 fell 5 percent.
The following day was no better: The Dow Jones plunged another 5.5 percent, the Nasdaq fell another 5.8 percent and the S&P 500 dropped another 6 percent. In two days, investors lost a record $6.6 trillion. That of course included many Americans who depend on that money to sustain their retirement.
And what of the ever-ambitious Mr. Lutnick? There he was on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, touting the immutable agenda of his heroic leader. “The tariffs are coming: He announced that, and he wasn't kidding,” Lutnick told anchor Margaret Brennan. And, “the president has made it crystal, crystal clear—this is the policy.”
Never mind that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned that the country faces “a highly uncertain outlook with elevated risks of both higher unemployment and higher inflation.” Never mind that financial institutions were warning that the risk of a recession was accelerating. Forget the fact that activist investor and Trump cheerleader Bill Ackman called the tariff effect “a self-induced, economic nuclear winter,” just one of many rising voices of panic among the one-percenters.
No, it was go, go, go for the mad hatter of trade policy, reveling in an escalating trade war with countries all over the planet.
There he was Tuesday night, dressed in a tuxedo, bragging to Republicans at a Congressional dinner that leaders all around the world are flooding the phone lines to make deals to minimize the carnage. “I’m telling you, these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass,” he said proudly. And more: The impact of his brilliant tariffs is “going to be legendary, you watch. Legendary in a positive way, I have to say. It’s going to be legendary.”
In a sign of his state of delusion, he offered up to the Republicans one of his fabricated “sir” stories. Foreign leaders “are dying to make a deal,” he said. “‘Please, please, sir, make a deal, I’ll do anything, I’ll do anything sir.’”
That was Tuesday night. By Wednesday morning, as the market was careening downward again and treasury bonds were being sold off, Trump flipped. On Truth Social, he announced an immediate 90-day pause on the vast majority of tariffs, except for a 10 percent charge across the board and a total 145 percent tariff on China. (Hours earlier, he also posted that “this is a great time to buy!!!”—raising serious questions about whether it was all planned to tip off inside traders.)
Explaining his decision to back down, Trump told reporters that “people were jumping a little bit out of line” and “were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid.” The market reaction to the pause was euphoric: The Dow Jones jumped 7.9 percent, the Nasdaq soared 12.2 percent and the S&P 500 surged 9.5 percent.
If Trump’s tariffs were “legendary” the night before, he was even more excited now about the problem he created that he was now fixing. “We were up like close to 3,000 points,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “Nobody has ever seen a day like that. I think that's a record, isn't it, fellas?”
“Definitely,” said Lutnick with a made-to-please smile.
“The geniuses of the world, they get it,” Trump continued, later offering this self-praise: “No other president would have done what I did. No other president.”
And yesterday, the oleaginous Lutnick had already forgotten his boss’ previous commitment to stay the course. Asked by a reporter if Trump had changed his mind because of the crashing market, Lutnick said, “I will happily say, definitively, it was not. Donald Trump is in charge of these policies…He is the greatest negotiator and the greatest person who understands. These are his goals and his objectives and he is executing them.”
So what are we to make of these fraught eight days? Yes, they are a harbinger of more chaos and uncertainty to come as the man who 77 million Americans elevated to the White House flips from one whim to the next and never does the real work of policymaking that requires thinking beyond the moment. We can expect that he will continue his self-serving edicts without capable advisers to convince him to reconsider. We can also be sure that he will use the next 90 days to personally benefit from countries seeking to avoid further chaos, convinced that capitulation will earn them a reprieve.
But let’s also not doubt that this tariff fiasco has illustrated that Trump is no invincible ruler. Negative pressure can change the trajectory and outcome of his agenda. That doesn’t just depend on the collective reaction of market investors or disgruntled billionaires on economic policy, it also means that law firms and schools and millions of Americans acting in solidarity to reject the regime’s actions can force change.
As the great Benjamin Franklin wisely and famously put it at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, “We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”
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I know this is not the point of your writing but, what these three are perpetuating is a massive stock manipulation. He as much admitted it when talking about Charles Schwab and another person were with him in the Oval Office. Congress won’t investigate because members of his party in Congress are in on it. America is being pillaged right in front of our eyes.
The man is INSANE…and is dragging everyone around him into his circle of insanity by demanding absolute fealty to his every whim, including the most impactful and important governmental departments and branches that have sway over just about everything ; Congress, Justice Dept, the Pentagon, the HHS, the SEC, IRS and on and on. He’s a Neanderthal, swinging his axe over his head, with the rest of us trying to get out of the way. When will someone invoke the 25th Amendment and remove him from office???