Trump Builds Legacy of Destruction As Tariffs Hit

Wall Street "humbled" on Trump's "Liberation Day" as the man who put a tariff on penguins placed a 104% tariff on China and global markets reeled in reaction.

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At midnight last night, Trump’s tariffs took place. Global markets are reeling in reaction. Wall Street is enraged but “humbled.”

From putting a tariff on penguins to placing a 104% tariff on China, Donald Trump embodies the stereotype of the man who thinks he know everything. He does not.

The EU just approved new tariffs on $23 billion in US, China is hitting the US back with 84% tariffs and Canada slapped Trump’s US with a 25% levy on auto imports.

Making enemies is what Trump knows best.

His own billionaire backers are in the finding out stage currently.

Wall Street Humbled

Wall Street is said to be “humbled” by Trump’s tariffs:

By Monday, hedge fund billionaires — many of whom had been loud and proud boosters of Mr. Trump’s second term — were going public with their cries.

“The global economy is being taken down because of bad math,” the hedge fund manager William A. Ackman posted Monday morning on X. He added, “The President’s advisors need to acknowledge their error before April 9th and make a course correction before the President makes a big mistake.

Reader, the President did not make a course correction.

And on this issue alone, we can agree with Ackman, whose own greed brought this destruction upon the country: Trump has made a big mistake. But that was to be expected, because Trump is a big mistake. But of course, Ackman has already shifted into a bootlicking defense of Trump’s tariffs. Such alphas!

Trump Doesn’t Know What He Doesn’t Know

Acknowledging our limitations is critical in the pursuit of knowledge — the ultimate sign of life when it comes to intelligence, as Plato recounted the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates teaching via the Socratic paradox. In other words, a smart person questions their own wisdom. They are open to information in the pursuit of knowledge. They are crucially aware that they do not know everything.

They move through the world as if they know nothing; whereas Trump’s tariffs are rooted in his lifelong unexplored beliefs.

Trump’s chief economic advisor from 2017 to 2018 Gary Cohn told this story about Trump’s “beliefs” to Bob Woodward for his 2018 book Fear, recounted here by LGM:

Of course the United States manufactured things, but the reality did not match the vision in Trump’s mind. The president clung to an outdated view of America – locomotives, factories with huge smokestacks, workers busy on assembly lines. [Gary] Cohn assembled every piece of economic data available to show that American workers did not aspire to work in assembly factories . . .

…

Trump wasn’t buying it.

Several times Cohn just asked the president, “why do you have these views?”

“I just do,” Trump replied. “I’ve had these views for 30 years.” “That doesn’t mean they’re right,” Cohn said. “I had the view for 15 years I could play professional football. It doesn’t mean I was right.”

Even allowing for Cohn’s likely embellishment of this story to his own benefit, Trump doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. This is a theme we’ve seen play out repeatedly.

Trump is Destroying the US

In Trump’s first term, there were some adults around him to stop his “worst impulses,” but this time around, he’s surrounded himself with corrupt loyalists.

None of these people seem to actually care about the American people or this country.

And so for example, Trump dropped unexpected news of a tariff on drug imports as well, because he says drug companies will leave China when they hear this. Or maybe he feels less innovation, less research and development into new drug therapies for diseases that are killing Americans, will be a benefit.

Donald Trump isn’t confident enough to learn new things; rather, he is led about by the ego like a dangerous, blubbering buffoon who just so happens to have been so trusted with the nuclear button by the entire Republican Party.

Yet it has to be acknowledged that Mr. Trump has found a creative way to destroy the U,S. via its economy and global partnerships -- the core of its “excellence” throughout its history.