Trump’s Tariff Madness Is About One Thing: His Thirst for One-Man Rule
Last weekend, the administration excluded phones, chipmaking, and some computers
from his tariffs. Then Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick went on television and
muddied the waters, casting doubt on exactly what would be exempted and what
would not. Who knows where that issue will stand by the time you read this.
The pandemonium that is Trump’s policymaking process is why the world
now sees our country as unreliable. But the consistent message was: The bazaar
is open. Come and get Trump’s special blessing by kissing his … well, you know
where. And you can bet that the deepest-pocketed actors in our economy will
have a better chance of cajoling the exemptions and concessions they want from
Trump than will a small business threatened with bankruptcy because an imported
component it needs to make its product remains subject to tariffs and enormous price
increases.
Since Trump took office, his opponents have struggled with the blinding speed
of his wrecking crew. How, his foes have asked, can we keep focus when he is
doing so many bad things simultaneously—ignoring the Supreme Court by
keeping Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, an entirely innocent father of three, in
an El Salvador prison to which he should never have been sent; lawlessly
closing agencies and laying off workers through Elon Musk’s DOGE; violating the
First Amendment by deporting legal residents because they exercise their free
speech rights; attempting (with some, but fortunately not universal, success)
to intimidate universities and law firms into submission to the president’s diktats;
going after the Associated Press for refusing to go along with Trump’s whim in
unilaterally renaming the Gulf of Mexico; and undercutting our democratic
allies, notably Ukraine.
