Growing up, my family used to drive to Maine every summer. The car ride took six hours, during which my two sisters and I were left to occupy ourselves in the back seat. Like clockwork, every time we reached the last hour of the drive — when we had bored ourselves with books, games and conversation — we’d invariably devolve into bitter sibling squabbles: bickering and pinching each other for no other reason than to entertain ourselves through the home stretch of our journey.
These car-ride spats were front of mind for me Feb. 1 as Donald Trump made the sudden and bizarre decision to impose steep tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico and China. As the Wall Street Journal editorial board rather snarkily observed, these tariffs were inexplicably destructive and destabilizing. Within hours, both Canada and Mexico hit back hard with counter-tariffs on U.S. imports — the former opting rather shrewdly to target red-state economies specifically — and the stock market opened in free fall Feb. 3 as experts forecasted collateral damage to the economy.
Perhaps, then, it should have been no surprise that — just days after the original tariffs went into effect — Trump hit a thirty-day pause on his trade war with our neighbors. Under pressure from industry — not to mention Republican lawmakers concerned about what a trade war could mean for their constituents — Trump blinked, taking vague and insubstantial border security commitments from Canada and Mexico as a “bargaining chip” for stepping back from the brink.
In the wake of this mind-numbingly pointless fiasco, some Republicans praised Trump, hopelessly credulous of his “dealmaker-in-chief” facade — in spite of the fact that no “deal” (to the extent one could even call it that) was made here.
To explain what I mean, let us return to the back of the car on a long road trip. If, say, I pinched both of my sisters until they screamed, stopped pinching them and then congratulated myself when they stopped screaming, could I possibly consider myself a dealmaker? A peace-keeper? It is a tragic reflection on the state of our republic that a child in diapers could see past such a ruse.
Still, big and important questions remain. Like, why poison the well with our closest trading partners? Why pursue such profoundly inflationary policies when prices are already high? And whatever happened to the hawkish anti-inflation rhetoric Trump deployed on the campaign trail last fall? At what point did this administration decide to abandon its promise to “Make America Affordable Again?”
The answers here, in my view, go deeper than mere boredom (as in the cabin-feverish final hour of a car ride): I think Donald Trump is trapped.
After mounting a campaign for the White House predicated (at least in part) on his desire to avoid being sent to prison — and cashing in on raging anti-establishment sentiment in the process — the president now finds himself in an impossible position. He must helm a nation facing myriad crises: from a fragile economy, staggering income inequality and bitter partisan divisions, to uncertainty and instability on the world stage.
Worse, the president has few tools at his disposal for addressing these issues head-on. Among the American public, precious little faith in government remains. The Republican Party controls Washington, yet there is little indication that major legislative changes are forthcoming. Indeed, majorities in both houses of Congress are so slim, it appears that Republicans’ main challenge in the coming weeks will be keeping their own government from shutting down when funding runs out March 14.
Trump has reclaimed the crown of oldest president to take oath — ever. He has no more campaigns to run and thereby little incentive to govern with levelheadedness, dynamism or an eye toward the future. His only responsibility now is to those who helped him get elected (Elon Musk comes to mind). Everything else is icing on the cake: he gets to play president — both on TV (see: his trip to the Super Bowl) and in the privacy of his home — while letting the sycophants who surround him run buck wild through the halls of power.
But the politics of treating the presidency in this way (that is, partly like a cash grab and partly like a luxury retirement resort) are extremely fraught. The president, after all, did not (openly) campaign on being a shameless kleptocrat.
So it is surely no wonder that he aimlessly picks fights with neighbors and allies, only to chicken out at the last second.
This never-ending “will-he-won’t-he” charade — of which the tariffs are only a part — is merely a facade obscures the primary aims and goals of his presidency. While the president is off playing golf or watching TV — leaving Musk and his band of teenage hackers to pilfer government databases — the press and the public are obsessing over whether or not he’s actually serious about nuking our trade partnership with Canada.
This is a smokescreen (and a rather obvious one at that). Beyond it, though, there is a road out of the wilderness. And the sooner we refuse to let our attention be manipulated this way, the sooner we will see this administration for exactly what it is: a rabid pack of ultra-wealthy dorks pickpocketing our country for loose change.
Contact Beatrice Neilson at neilson@oxy.edu
