The incoherence of politicians is increasing. The current war of the US government against international trade offers many examples.
President Donald Trump has stated that the high rates he imposed on imported goods were both temporary and permanent (‘Are Trump’s rates negotiable or here to stay? In the midst of confusion, he says it can be both“ABC News, April 7, 2025):
In the midst of mixed messages from the White House of the White House, President Donald Trump was immediately asked on Monday whether his radical rates are discussable or here to stay.
“They can both be true,” Trump replied. “There may be permanent rates and there may also be negotiations because there are things that we need that go beyond the rates.”
He said too (“Trump’s bluff calling on ‘reciprocal’ rates, ‘” Wall Street JournalApril 6, 2025):
My policy will never change to the many investors who enter the United States and invest huge amounts of money
He seemed to confirm both that he was waiting for a phone call from “China” to weaken him and pay tribute And That is already negotiated with them (‘Dow Jones jumps 1,300 points on Trump news rates; Apple, Nvidia, Tesla Rally” Investor’s Business DailyApril 8, 2025). This week, on Monday morning at 9:08 AMHe wrote on his social media:
China also wants to close a deal, but they don’t know how to let it start. We are waiting for their phone call.
But the same Monday morning at 11:14 AMHe also wrote:
If China has not retracted 34% [retaliatory tariff] Increase … All conversations with China about their requested meetings are terminated with us!
Tongue tongue, breath of spirit or innocent baby talk? Maybe. But these are just examples of continuous incoherence.
A is non-aFreedom is indoors, liberation is submission, war is peace and temporarily is permanent. We know that this is incorrect or, more precisely, that we cannot think and debate rational ideas without accepting the law of the contradiction of classical logic. There are other ways to approach reality, such as poetry, music and perhaps religion, but they cannot serve as the basis of political philosophy and government policy.
What we see now in America is a protectionist policy that is completely incoherent, economic illiterate and good clownish. ‘Trade Wars are good and easy to win‘Trump tweeted on March 2, 2018. On January 31 of this year, he indicated That “the rates will make us very rich and very strong.”
On April 2, ‘Liberation Day’, Trump announced So -called “reciprocal” rates, calculated with a formula that has no basis in economic analysis and simply assumes that the “rates” that are applied by foreign states are proportional to the trade shortage of America. Fraudulent advertising went as far as the president waved a thick report, the National trade estimate report on foreign trade barriersEvery year published by the UST and whose 2025 version was submitted to the congress a few days earlier. The theatrics of the President suggested that the 400-page report was the basis of the ‘Mutual Rates’ formula, while it only offers a qualitative list of rates and (assumed) non-tariff barriers of around 50 countries. The statement of 2 April mentioned nearly 180 countries, the export of which was subject to ‘mutual rates’. (The EU counts for one country.) An explanatory magazine of the “reciprocal rates” calculation was delivered by the White House as the two pages “Executive summary“A document that is infallible and probably does not exist. The few academic quotes in the” Summary “do not justify the formula, and many of the authors of the articles took exception to how their work was used. And so forth.
The random, if not absurd determination of “mutual rates” is illustrated by St. Pierre and Miquelon, a small North Atlantic archipelago that is not a country, but a French territory where fewer than 6,000 people live. It is neither part of the French or European customs zone and does not export anything to the United States. Yet it was placed in the category of the highest ‘reciprocal rate’, that is, 50%. Another non-country that the United States would have abused is the heard island and McDonald Islands, an Australian territory that is only occupied by animals, mainly penguins. “Don’t know what they have done to Mr Trump,” joked the Australian trade minister who spoke about the animals. (“A whodunit rate: how a small French archipelago became the best target of Trump” Wall Street JournalApril 4, 2025; See “For the entire list of” mutual rates “,”Where Trump’s rates are now” Wall Street JournalApril 9, 2025.)
No wonder why so many professional economists (and economic bloggers, including Jon Murphy) and economic journalists found the entire exercise absurd.
A few days after these events, Trump intensified the trade war against China-which mainly means against Americans who pay the rates-while, for the countries who behave, they announced a 90-day break at the rates of more than 10%. In other words, he was partially withdrawn under the probability of a serious economic crash, a decrease in the dollar and high interest rates (“America’s financial system came close to the edge” The economistApril 10, 2025). But this break can be paused or canceled by the pleasure of one man. And if rates and personal power are so good, why does Mr. Do not Trump on a universal rate of, for example, 254% (a meaningless formula can be addressed to produce that figure), and then pause for 90 days about what is imported from countries whose producers sell something politically sensitive to him?
One head in it The economist from April 10 Reads together with his subtitle:
Trump’s incoherent trade policy will cause permanent damage
Even after his backtracking, the president has drastically urged the world economy
A government that considerably limited the freedom to trade of its own citizens and residents and run a propaganda machine to push related lies on the population, must represent an advanced case of trade reinforcement syndrome. Maybe we can see that as the prefiguration of a utopian mix of Orwellian Vicious rulers and an addicted and smiling population a la Huxley. The observation that earlier governments have brought their own stones to the construction of the Palace of Leviathan is correct and useful for a project in the constitutional political economy: the resident or residents of the Palace Chain. But it also runs the risk of becoming a particial distraction that underestimates the current danger.
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A family Orwellian-Huxleyan