How Trump is killing this country's reliability

In the eleven days since Trump ignited a trade war with the rest of the world, here's what has happened:

• The White House bounced back and forth on whether the announced tariffs were permanent or negotiable. 
• Commerce Secretary Lutnick said, "I don't think there's any chance that President Trump's going to back off his tariffs. This is the reordering of global trade."
• One of the rationales given for the tariffs is that they would bring manufacturing jobs back to America - with Lutnick specifically citing the making of iPhones. 
• When it became clear that these moves were causing a major sell-off of U.S. bonds, Trump paused the tariffs that the administration was referring to as "reciprocal."
• Treasury Secretary Bessent said the pause in "reciprocal" tariffs was the strategy all along.
• The higher tariffs on China were not paused. But members of the Trump administration were confused about whether they were 125% or 145%. 
• Smartphones (including iPhones) and computers were exempted from the tariffs on China. But as Paul Krugman noted, "we’re now putting much higher tariffs on intermediate goods used in manufacturing (ie, Chinese batteries) than on final goods. This actually discourages manufacturing in the United States."
• The next day, Lutnick and Trump announced that the exemptions for electronics would be temporary.

I defy anyone to claim that, behind all of this, is some three-dimensional chess strategy. It's simply nuts! 

The truth is that, as economist Justin Wolfers said, we are currently in the midst of two crises: "A tariff crisis, and a crisis of confidence built upon incompetence." According to experts, it is that crisis of  confidence that caused the sell-off of U.S. bonds. 

As Jerusalem Demsas points out, all of this poses a long-term problem for the United States.

Countries can and will move on without the United States. Their firms will establish new supply chains and pursue other markets. Even if the U.S. were the ultra-dominant trading partner it used to be, the credibility of the nation’s promises, its treaties, its agreements, and even its basic rationality has evaporated in just weeks...

America’s economic dominance has long been supported by alliances, faith in U.S. debt, and the independence of the Fed. Those three things “were all built on trust that took decades to build,” the economist Ernie Tedeschi told me...

The problem facing future administrations—and this one, in the unlikely event that it gains a modicum of rationality—is that the country has killed its reliability.

In case you needed some more gaslighting, the administration that killed this country's reliability is responding by simply saying, "Trust Trump." That's like asking you to trust the pyromaniac who is in the process of burning down your house. 

Donald Trump is incapable of making rational decisions. Instead, he openly brags about making them "instinctively." For example, when asked how he would decide whether to give tariff relief to particular companies, the president responded by saying, "Instinctively, more than anything else. You almost can’t take a pencil to paper. It’s really more of an instinct, I think, than anything else.” 

As a recovering therapist, let me assure you that the instincts of a narcissistic sociopath are the opposite of rational.