Trump didn’t just end his ill-conceived tariff drama, he only postponed it. Again. It’s not good news, it’s just delayed news.
Economists know that the best conduit to a healthy economy is stability. Yet the only reliable commodity from the Trump administration to date has been instability. In under three months of Trump’s second term, the chaos has been so relentless that even Fox News propagandists have, at times, fumbled their spin.
To effectively strategize for the kinds of volatility Trump will keep inflicting on the world—economic, climate, military, and everything in between— business experts should use the next ninety days to consider what’s really driving the mayhem: As many experts see it, Trump doesn’t have buyers’ remorse, he has dementia. Trying to reason with him is like trying to reason with a man who barks when it rains, and the sooner they know, the better.
World trade policy driven by unfounded paranoia
Trump argues that Europeans and other advanced economies "owe" the United States for past and current trade imbalances, because he does not understand the basics of global trade. If Americans buy more from another country than that country buys from us, Trump registers that as proof that we are being “ripped off.” It’s a paranoia-driven claim that borders on gibberish.
Countries do not buy and sell the same dollar amounts from one another in part because they are not the same size: a country that is 1/10th the size or population of the US cannot import the same amount we import, in part because what would they do with ten times more tires and machinery than their population needs? Trump also ignores that currency valuations vary widely, making dollar value comparisons idiotic. Last Econ 101 point, some countries export coffee and sugar while others export cellphones and robots, and the costs of each are simply not comparable. These are basic trade realities that eluded Trump’s simplistic, ChatGPT-generated “tariffs chart.”
In response to bond yields crashing over his tariff scheme, Trump came out with a plan this week to “negotiate” with more than 75 countries, but his aim remains nonsensical: he wants to flatten trade deficits with every country that imports lower amounts of American goods than they export. Trump’s failure to grasp that the numbers don’t match because they cannot match, due to size, populations, currencies and differing commodities, is driven by his paranoia.
Trump’s persistent belief that he is being taken advantage of doesn’t reflect strength, it reflects advancing dementia.
Trump is drinking his own Kool-Aid
Trump’s tariffs debacle also suggests he drinks his own kool-aid. Trump, with the help of his propaganda machine, convinced 49% of US voters that the Biden economy was a catastrophe. In fact-based reality (a phrase no longer redundant), based on all standard economic metrics including GDP, labor and wage growth, investment levels, and retreating inflation, Biden rebuilt an historically strong economy from the covid ashes Trump left behind.
Both the foundational belief- that the US economy is struggling and in need of Trump to “save it,”- and the belief that our allies are “ripping us off” reflects the same underlying pathology of delusion that drove Trump to insist that the 2020 election was “stolen” despite all evidence to the contrary.
I’m no psychiatrist, but you don’t need a medical degree to understand that barking ‘up is down’ with a megaphone is delusional.
The art of the squeal
Mental health professionals sounded the alarm over Trump’s dementia during his first term; their professional alarm continues to grow with mounting evidence in his second. But it shouldn’t take an expert. In both word and deed, Trump’s behavior is bizarre even to lay observers.
At the National Republican Congressional Committee meeting last week, Trump belittled every world leader whose economy he was intentionally harming, bragging,“These countries are calling us up. Kissing my ass… They are dying to make a deal. “Please, please, sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything, sir. And then I’ll see some rebel Republican, you know, some guy that wants to grandstand, saying: ‘I think that Congress should take over negotiations.’ Let me tell you: you don’t negotiate like I negotiate.”
Aside from the fact that he caved the next day, evidently kissing his own ass, only a mentally impaired man would belittle allies and political colleagues this way. Trump and his uneducated supporters may think his comments look strong, but to any honest observer, including those ‘grandstanding Republicans’ who want Congress to perform its constitutional duty,the comments look unhinged. They suggest Trump thinks trying to bully and degrade world leaders, with their own elections and political reputations to consider, is an effective way to manage relationships. As China’s vow to fight his trade war to the bitter end shows, his impaired judgment is a formula for disaster.
Evidence that Sir has dementia is everywhere; where is the 25th Amendment?
Trump’s disastrous commentary on world trade tracks with his other unhinged conduct, with evidence so compelling any lay person can interpret it for themselves:
He insists he is not joking about serving a third term, despite the clarity of the 22nd Amendment which bars a president from seeking more than two terms;
He deluded himself about the 2020 election; for every state Trump lost, he claimed he was “cheated,” demandingthat supporters “find” additional votes to cancel his loss;
Just before the election he claimed on Fox News that the audience went “crazy” during his “crushing” debate performance against Kamala Harris. There was no audience during that debate, and by all national accounts, Harris trounced him.
He wants to develop Gaza into a resort for the wealthy, invade Mexico, annex Canada, steal the Panama Canal and buy Greenland.
For his 79th birthday, he is now planning a massive military parade through the streets of Washington, DC, with an estimated cost of over $92 million, at a time when DOGE has gutted the federal government to “cut costs.”
These examples are just the tip of a fast-melting iceberg; he also bragged about spending “a great day in Louisiana” after he spent the day in Georgia; he often says North Korea is “trying to kill me,” (he means Iran); and as late as November, he was still talking about his race against Biden, despite Biden having left the race over a month earlier.
Experts have not been shy in their assessments either. More than 3000 credentialed psychiatrists, psychologists and mental health professionals have added their signatures to a petition circulating currently, stating that Trump has probable dementia. They also concluded that their duty to warn the nation outweighed their duty to refrain from diagnosing in absentia.
In my mind, the pertinent question looming now is, what other dangerously insane act will it take before Republicans locate their missing spines and join Democrats in invoking the 25th Amendment?
Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are published in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.