« on: Wed, 08 January 2025, 07:29:58 »
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Bret Stephens (NYT 2025-03-10) starts with the tariffs, noting that every president since the Great Depression has correctly concluded that the ensuing economic crisis and World War that followed that calamity was attributable in large part to the notorious 1930 Smoot Hawley Tariffs.
That is, until the current occupant of the Oval Office. Until him, no U.S. president has been so ignorant of the lessons of history. Until him, no U.S. president has been so incompetent in putting his own ideas into practice. That’s a conclusion that stock markets seem to have drawn as they plunged following the Trump triple whammy: first, tariff threats against our largest trading partners, spelling much higher costs; second, twice-repeated monthlong reprieves on some of those tariffs, meaning a zero-predictability business environment; finally, his tacit admission, to Maria Bartiromo of Fox News, that the United States could go into recession this year, and that it’s a price he’s willing to pay to do what he calls a “big thing.” In short, a willful, erratic and heedless president is prepared to risk both the U.S. and global economy to make his ideological point. This won’t end well, especially in a no-guardrails administration staffed by a how-high team of enablers and toadies.
But Stephens goes further than simply castigating these pointless and destructive tariffs that Trump has taken such a pathological shine to. He explains how the fancifully created “Department of Governmental Efficiency, (“DOGE”) would be more aptly characterized as an engine of wholesale destruction. Because nothing Musk is doing is about “efficiency.”
