What Trump's plan to rename Mt. Denali has to do with the economy

Our mentally unfit president-elect has spent a lot of time lately raging against U.S. allies. He's threatening to annex Canada as the 51st state, take back the Panama Canal, and buy Greenland from Denmark. Given all of that, the news that he wants to rename a mountain in Alaska after President McKinley isn't gaining as much traction. But it's worth taking a minute to see what's up with this one. 

In 2015, then-President Barack Obama visited Alaska to highlight the issue of climate change. As part of that trip, he announced that Mt. McKinley would revert to its original Native Alaskan name - Mt. Denali. Then-private citizen Donald Trump wasn't happy about that.

President Obama wants to change the name of Mt. McKinley to Denali after more than 100 years. Great insult to Ohio. I will change back!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 1, 2015

Two years later, as president, Trump broached the topic of reverting to Mt. McKinley with Alaska's two Republican senators - Murkowski and Sullivan. Here's their response:

“Lisa – Sen. Murkowski – and I jumped over the desk,” Sullivan said. “We said no, no!”

Trump, perplexed that the two Republicans wanted to keep an Obama-era decision, asked why...

“The Alaska Native people named that mountain over 10,000 years ago,” Sullivan said. “Denali, that was the name.”

Trump went on to drop the idea. Now he's talking about it again publicly.

Some will suggest that this is just one more way the president-elect is attempting to undo anything Obama accomplished. While it's probably a fools errand to try to guess this guy's motives, I suspect there's some truth to that.

But we also have to keep in mind that, during the 2024 campaign, Trump regularly brought up McKinley as the tariff guy. For example: 

We’re going to use tariffs very, very wisely. You know, our country in the 1890s was ... probably the wealthiest it ever was, because it was a system of tariffs. And we had a president — you know McKinley, right? You remember Mount McKinley? And then they changed the name. But one of those things. He was really a very good businessman, and he took in billions of dollars at the time, which today it’s always trillions, but then it was billions and probably hundreds of millions. But we were a very wealthy country, and we’re going to be doing that now.

I would suggest that, as CEOs and finance leaders try to talk Trump out of tariffs, this focus on Mt. McKinley is yet another way to tell them he's not budging. 

In his re-telling of McKinley's record, Trump seems to have missed the ending.

What lessons should be taken from the passage of the Tariff Act of 1890, which increased average duties across all imports from 38 to 49.5 percent? Well, for one thing, with domestic prices driven up by the tariff, the measure was very unpopular. It led to a political disaster for the Republicans, who lost the House in the 1890 election in dramatic fashion, cutting the number of seats they held from 171 to 88.

Everyone but the president-elect seems to understand that the way he plans to use tariffs will drive up prices. It's almost as if Trump is determined to crash the economy. Whether or not the Republican Party is held accountable for that remains to be seen.