On Tuesday night, hours after the Dow Jones stock index had closed — falling several hundred points for the second day straight in response to the U.S. imposing excessive tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China — Donald Trump addressed a joint session of Congress and declared a brand new “golden age of America.”
In two days, world inventory markets have shed trillions of {dollars} in worth, way over the U.S. might ever probably hope to reap by way of tariffs. Trump being Trump, he doubled down on an motion that threatens to wreak havoc on the worldwide economic system, to ship the market right into a tailspin — and to dramatically increase unemployment throughout the three international locations of North America.
Come April 2, he introduced, the U.S. will impose what he referred to as “reciprocal tariffs” on countries around the world, thus doubtless setting off a cascading chain of unfavourable market reactions and escalating tariff battles world wide. Trump singled out for point out the international locations of the European Union, South Korea, India, and several other others.
And, whereas he acknowledged there may be financial ache, he made gentle of that and basically informed farmers, who stand to be hit notably arduous by the tariff wars, to easily buckle up and benefit from the bumpy experience. Let’s see how these farmers, most of them Trump voters (upward of three-quarters of voters in farming counties went for Trump in 2024) admire that recommendation.
In the meantime, The Wall Avenue Journal has reported the deputy secretary-general of the Worldwide Chamber of Commerce as saying “this might be the beginning of a downward spiral that places us in Thirties trade-war territory,” warning that Trump’s tariffs on imports might set off a Nice Despair-magnitude crash.
GOP members of Congress responded to Trump’s inane claims in regards to the economic system by leaping to their toes and chanting, “USA, USA” and “Trump, Trump, Trump,” ignoring the truth that banking, the auto trade and high-tech inventory have all been notably hammered this week. Democrats sat stony-faced.
The speech, a State of the Union in all but name, ran long, as Trump’s speeches generally tend to do. For practically two hours, the MAGA man blasted forth a mélange of outright lies, distortions based mostly round kernels of reality, irrelevant anecdotes and shameless insults. He additionally went off on a very cringeworthy self-pity celebration, repeatedly lambasting the Democrats — most of whom had been sitting silently within the chamber and holding up placards with such phrases as “false” and “save Medicaid” — for being unwilling to applaud him.
Trump’s a showman. He might whine like a broken kitten, however he additionally is aware of when to be faux-generous; witness his call-out to the 13-year-old most cancers survivor who had at all times wished to be a cop, and whom Trump appointed, reside on digicam, as a Secret Service particular agent; or his equally theatrical announcement to a younger man in uniform that his dream of stepping into West Level had come true and he had been accepted. Each youths went wide-eyed with pleasure, thus furthering the narrative of Trump because the beneficent strongman.
However lower out the truth TV antics, and what was left was a mixture of recycled GOP tropes relationship again to the Reagan period, and to Barry Goldwater earlier than him — authorities is unhealthy; the Panama Canal ought to belong to the U.S. once more; oil is sweet; taxes are horrible; wealthy individuals are good, poor individuals are unhealthy — layered with a veneer of Trump-patented, Gov. George Wallace-influenced, bigotries and imperial braggadocio.
Trump’s tariffs and imports might set off a Nice Despair-magnitude crash.
In these practically two hours, the president repeatedly smeared undocumented immigrants as “criminals” and “savages.” He implied Democrats are weak on crime, whereas Republicans wish to empower the police to be not simply powerful on crime, but in addition intentionally tough on law-breakers (excepting, after all, those from January 6, 2021). He asserted that transgender Individuals have to be rooted out of each establishment, from ladies’s sports activities to the U.S. navy, snarling: “Wokeness is bother. Wokeness is unhealthy. It’s gone — and we really feel so a lot better for it.”
In Trump’s telling, Elon Musk (fascist salutes notwithstanding) is a real American hero for rooting out huge nests of corruption in USAID. No point out, after all, of the defunding of polio vaccination efforts, TB remedies globally, or HIV medicine that thousands and thousands of African sufferers depend on. No point out, both, of the cessation of campaigns to regulate malaria and Ebola outbreaks, or of the thousands and thousands of individuals he put prone to dying of hunger due to the abrupt finish to U.S. anti-hunger applications. (You understand issues are egregious on this enviornment when even a Supreme Court as conservative as this one decides, because it did this morning, that the Trump administration has overstepped its bounds by refusing to honor USAID contracts for work already accomplished.)
Trump additionally repeated Musk’s drained canard that many thousands and thousands of Social Safety recipients are a long time older than 100, together with some who’re over 160. In actuality, the Social Security Administration uses an old computing program, COBOL, which doesn’t have a built-in default date however may interpret 75 as 1875 as a substitute of 1975, attributable to incorrect coding or legacy knowledge dealing with practices. Had Musk spent a bit extra time considering earlier than speaking, he would doubtless have realized that what his hacker-squad has uncovered isn’t fraud on an epic scale, it’s merely the programming kinks of a six-decade-old laptop program. However Musk, like Trump, appears by no means eager to parse his statements for accuracy. Say it sufficient instances and essentially the most flagrant lie ultimately acquires a patina of actuality.
Another tidbits from the speech: Trump actually, actually desires to seize Greenland for the US. “We want it … for worldwide world safety,” he claimed. “And … by some means, we’re going to get it.” Greenland’s prime minister has already rejected Trump’s imperial ambitions. His plan, after all, may also be unwelcome information to the European Union, which has pledged to guard the borders of its members — a gaggle that features Denmark, a NATO member which governs Greenland.
Trump additionally actually, actually doesn’t like Ukrainians, arguing that the navy help they’ve secured from the U.S. in recent times is “like taking sweet from a child.” He’s none too keen on the European Union, which he accused of exploiting the U.S. on tariffs and of constant to purchase huge quantities of Russian oil and gasoline, even whereas the U.S. was spending cash to arm Ukraine in its combat.
However he does have slightly a smooth spot for Russia, whose leaders he stated had despatched his crew “robust alerts that they’re prepared for peace. Wouldn’t that be lovely?”
Arguably, although, the largest takeaway of the evening was simply how messianic Trump has develop into. Jaw-droppingly, he asserted that the opening month of his presidency was more successful than that of George Washington. Later, as his prolonged oration dragged to a conclusion, he introduced that through the assassination try towards him in July, he “was saved by God to make America nice once more.” He continued: “It’s our flip to take America’s future into our personal fingers. … This shall be our biggest period; with God’s assist over the subsequent 4 years.” He constructed to a Musk-ian crescendo: “We’re going to … plant the American flag on the planet Mars, and even far past. … My fellow Individuals, prepare for an unbelievable future, as a result of the golden age of America has solely simply begun.”
Trump’s imaginative and prescient is, after all, a fever dream, tinted with the hues of a superhero cartoon narrative. In six weeks, Trump has frayed lots of the U.S.’s closest alliances; has, to the mystification of these allies, reoriented the nation towards Russia and North Korea in its United Nations votes; has poisoned the properly of friendship with the U.S.’s neighbors to the north and south; and has eviscerated the livelihoods of many tens of hundreds of hard-working public servants. Trump’s tariff wars will hurt U.S. shoppers and lots of U.S. corporations. And the harm to inventory portfolios attributable to his insurance policies will hit the retirement accounts of tens of thousands and thousands of aged Individuals and middle-aged Individuals hoping to have the ability to save up for what’s stacking as much as be an more and more insecure future. His assault on something remotely to do with selling a cleaner, greener economic system will condemn the world to intensifying local weather change. The president has didn’t immediately cut back inflation, and his tariff insurance policies will virtually actually result in an acceleration of value will increase. And much from rising the economic system, federal data suggest a sharp economic contraction this quarter.
That mixture of financial contraction and inflation is called stagflation, the dreaded duo that bedeviled western economies within the Seventies. If and when it arrives, ushered in to the GOP’s infinite, unthinking chants of “USA, USA,” it’s going to come stamped “Made in America” and “Delivered to you by President Donald J. Trump.”
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