THE BOTTOM LINE....EXPLAINED

fortune.com/2025/03/31/trump-economy-tariffs/



, Trump’s idiosyncratic, capricious rollout of tariffs has made it all but impossible for companies to invest at all, hampering Trump’s own stated goal of bringing investment and jobs back to the U.S.

Already, there is a confusing array of 12,500 tariff categories across 200 trading partners. We tallied up Trump’s tariff pronouncements over the last two months and found no less than a head-spinning 107 instances of paradoxical flip-flops on tariff policy, often with same-day reversals. That does not even account for often contradictory guidance from Trump’s deputies, which are then subsequently overruled by Trump himself.

Businesses need predictability and stability; no company can authorize billions in capital spending to build new plants or hire new workers when trade policy changes not day by day, not hour by hour, but in some cases, literally minute by minute. During our Yale CEO Caucus this month, CEOs groaned and cringed each time CNBC’s Eamon Javers read off a new tariff policy reversal, with seven flip-flops over our three-hour event.
On March 11, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute founder and president Jeffrey Sonnenfeld discussed the strategic opportunities and challenges of Trump 2.0.
Donovan Marks

Trump’s defenders argue this is all part of his “art of the deal”—to punch counterparties in the face so hard that they are knocked off balance and are all but begging for a deal. But the reality is, Trump is getting snookered in these deals, as companies merely repackage existing and preplanned capex spending into gauzy, headline-drawing “announcements” of “new investments” in the U.S. The veneer of glitz and glamour of fawning Oval Office press conferences announcing these new investments hides a much seamier reality, as much-ballyhooed new “investments” such as Foxconn’s planned $10 billion electronics factory in Wisconsin turn into abandoned shadows and idled plants. Meanwhile, foreign leaders and companies offer token concessions with little genuine benefit to the U.S., while racing to evade tariffs by rerouting supply chains through neutral countries, brazenly and openly defying Trump while paying lip service to his whims. That is why 90% of CEOs polled at our Yale CEO Caucus said that Trump’s tariffs are backfiring on the U.S.

These CEOs, like everyone else, are looking at ample data pointing to the widespread havoc wrought by Trump’s tariff tantrums. Not only have Trump’s botched tariff tantrums helped chop about $7 trillion in value off the stock market since his inauguration—enough to fund the government for an entire year—but the costs are being felt in the real economy. Far from bringing manufacturing and jobs back to the U.S., Trump is killing American manufacturing, hurting U.S. workers, and bringing the entire U.S. economy down with him. Inflation expectations have jumped to 32-year highs; consumer confidence has plunged 25% across both the University of Michigan and Conference Board surveys as consumer spending falls the most in five years; NFIB Small Business confidence has plunged 50%; the labor market is deteriorating as the number of new layoffs quadrupled over the last three months; capital spending and investments have come to a standstill; and GDP growth forecasts have come down by 1%—a head-spinning reversal of economic fortune as the initial euphoria of Trump’s pledges of tax cuts and deregulation morphed into the Frankenstein monster of all tariffs, all the time.

Of course, many business leaders wonder what motivates Trump’s destructive tariff tantrums. On one hand, Trump has obsessed over tariffs since at least the 1980s; and he has long, reductionistically viewed the U.S. balance of trade as if he were still running the Trump Organization, which tries to sell more than it buys every year. But the sheer, avoidable, intentional chaos of Trump’s tariff rollout, and his willingness to ignore significant stock market drawdowns, suggest there may be other explanatory factors. Some CEOs have privately suggested that Trump may be trying to induce a recession early in his term to “clear the deck” well before midterm elections—though that assumes a greater facility for long-term strategic foresight than is usually associated with Trump. More likely, perhaps Trump has no plan and is just making things up on the fly, with arbitrary megalomaniacal impulses unconstrained by yes-men staff.

In Trump’s tantrums, psychoanalysts might find strong resemblance to what Sigmund Freud called the “death drive” pathology of entrepreneurs, or what psychiatrists term the self-destructive impulse—akin to a child on the beach who builds a beautiful castle and kicks it down.

Forty-two years ago, Abraham Zaleznik, a psychoanalyst management scholar at the Harvard Business School, explained that many times, such entrepreneurial leaders as Trump and Musk are driven by an ultimately self-destructive megalomania, rooted in a bad relationship with a parent who disparaged them but is no longer around to be proven wrong. Zaleznik stated, “In their climb to the top, they have certain fantasies having to do with creating a new world. There is a search for restitution—to remake the world, remake their childhood, remake a relationship with a parent. They fall prey to the Midas theory. Everything they touch will turn to gold, and if it doesn’t they go bonkers. I think if we want to understand the entrepreneur we should look at the juvenile delinquent. I think there are a lot of similarities. They both have an under-developed super-ego. And so they don’t understand right from wrong.”

IN SPADES, A SUMMARY OF SHIT THAT IS /HAS COME DOWN AND WILL CONTINUE......NEWS ARTICLE NAILS IT......

More tariffs to be announced and finalized tomorrow!

I would love for Trump to concentrate on Communist China first.

Canada? Once the new PM is elected in April in a special snap election, expect to see him go on bended knee before Trump to beg for a ceasefire/truce on the tariffs for both nations.

Did you miss the news that Israel dropped all tariffs on US imports? That's the end game . . . a return to the original intent, trade with all nations, entanglement with none. Don't have to be gentle with nation-states that seek to harm us (Iran, are you listening?), bit neither should we accept tariffs levied on our exports while accepting imports without a tariff originating from a country that levies a tariff on our goods.

Wasn't it the collectivists who once took to the streets proclaiming "Free trade stops wars"? Doesn't it then make sense to stop the economic war being waged on US industry by seeking to establish free trade to stop the economic war against US industry?

homeagain wrote:
IN SPADES, A SUMMARY OF SHIT THAT IS /HAS COME DOWN AND WILL CONTINUE......NEWS ARTICLE NAILS IT......

Ah yes, more opinions from people who hate Trump. Is that really all you've got these days... bad opinions? While you try be Sigmond Freud and an astrological genius (who is always wrong)... Trump is doing EXCATLY what the MAJORITY of the country voted for.

Tell me what duo has done more that Trump and Musk, in our lifetime. These two don't need money because they already have everything they want, they only have one thing left that money can't buy.

THEY BOTH WANT A GREAT LEGACY

Why would they go through all of this, including dodging bullets? Why would they risk their fortunes and reputations trying to fix an obviously broken government? A government that created 36 trillion of debt can not be considered competent to take in and spend our money. Our country can't continue diluting our currency without eventually making it worthless.

The Democrat party is imploding, along with Hollywood, elite universities, and the leftist media. If Trump and Musk are able to make a measurable difference in the right direction, your party is finished. I'm not counting on that because I know that evil dishonest party has nothing to lose, so I expect something big to happen... assassination would be the cleanest way, but some other kind of lawfare setup is very likely. I doubt anyone on the planet has more personal security than Musk and Trump, but all it takes is the right kind of dirt on a security guard or even a cabinet member...

The real bottom line is that you have ZERO clue about what Trump will accomplish, but you are hoping Trump fails, which means you are hoping that our country fails. Since you will leave nobody behind when you leave this life... I guess that view makes sense for some people... just not me.

WELL.....WISCONSIN IS A WARNING SIGN....there r positive timeframes for everything/everyone AND THERE R NEGATIVE TIME FRAMES....Q2 is NOT TRUMP'S TIMEFRAME....AGAIN, U SCOFFED AT THE STATEMENT ABOUT THE FOURTH TURNING...WE R KNEE DEEP IN THAT CYCLE. WAKE UP AND LOOK AT REALITY. MUSK/TRUMP R NOT BATTING 100.... THEY WILL CONTINUE TO STRIKE OUT. BECAUSE AMERICAN'S DO NOT WANT FASCISM IN THEIR LIVES. JMO

Canada has just told the US. We will repeal all our tariffs if the US does the same.

Trump wins again.

AND TRUMPS' WORD IS SOLID.... YA, RIGHT.....IT WILL CHANGE AGAIN,BECAUSE HE LIKES TO PLAY GAMES....WAIT AND WATCH....THE AGREEMENT IS NOT SOLID,IT WILL BE ALTERED.......
THERE IS NO WIN, WHEN THE GAME IS KEEP EVERYONE OFF BALANCE...IT LEADS TO ECONOMIC CHAOS.....NJMO

Nations are falling in line. Wouldn't it be wild if all these Anti-Trump free trade defenders find out that Trump has created the largest global free trade zone ever?

CREDIBLE SOURCE PLEASE......OTHERWISE IT JUST SO MUCH BULLSHIT.....

Wait a week to see if the Atlantic opinion writers tell you it is true?

Remember those 50 intelligence experts that signed a document saying Hunter's laptop was a Russian plot?

Your media allies printed that lie over and over again. You don't trust my sources.

I don't trust your sources that told us Joe Biden was sharp as a tack and ready to serve for four more years.