I thought that Trump’s rollout of higher tariffs, and then more or less cancellation when the stock market fell, was just a matter of his general incompetence and failure to understand economics. In general, it may be that we should not attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity, but at least sometimes, there is an evil scheme behind what appears to be mere bungling.
The other day, I received an email from Senator Chris Murphy, with a column he had co-authored in the Financial Times, making the case that unpredictably changing tariffs actually serve the current Administration’s purposes. Tim Cook made a million dollar donation to Trump’s inaugural committee, and Apple has stayed in the Trump Administration’s good graces. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (my great-great-grandboss) announced that Apple would be exempt from “reciprocal” tariffs on smartphones, servers, memory chips, and some other products from China.
Trump may be smart enough to understand the art of the extortion, and surely some of his myrmidons are. If the president can impose tariffs (which he does not have the constitutional or statutory authority to do), and then fiddle with them at will, adjusting rates and granting or canceling exemptions, then American businesses can be compelled to truckle to him, paying bakhsheesh, not aiding the opposition or hiring people whom the Mango Mussolini has blacklisted, and so forth. That, to paraphrase, is Senator Murphy’s view, and it makes sense.
This is reason why no president can be trusted with too much power, and in particular, why the current gang of scoundrels must not be allowed to exceed its legal authority.
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