It’s been said that the key to understanding Trump is he never stopped being a reality TV star. I don’t think that’s the full picture, though. It’s better to understand that he is a trained actor who can play the role of a reality TV star very convincingly. He is highly intelligent, though he always plays the fool—both to throw people off his track and to be socially uninhibited. A fool can say and do all kinds of things. Like many tail-end intelligent people, he is not a person with strong morals. He has poignant base desires: for power, beauty, and wealth—in that order.
Now, about the tariff con: the point of a good con is that up until the very last second, the mark thinks they are dealing with a fool. It’s easiest to understand it going from the end backwards. He wants to be known as the greatest dealmaker in history. He likes to solve problems by making deals, and the biggest problem that the US faces—by a wide margin—is its debt. So the debt—or at least the interest payments—have to be significantly shrunk. Where can the money come from? Only the rest of the world.
You start by creating an artificial problem for all countries that only you can solve—a sort of bluff: I will kill your economy, and I’m dumb enough to kill my own “accidentally” in the process. You could just take the rich countries, but where’s the fun in that? It looks stronger to do them all in one go. It also helps bigger countries follow smaller ones that have already folded. Anyway, this bluff is the stick. And if you play this willingness to destroy yourself convincingly, you get a strong start for negotiations. But alas, there are many problems in the details: it will be super obvious that you are toast if you kill your own economy. So you have to be extra convincing that you don’t give a flying fuck. You have to assert beyond any doubt that you are unassailable in your position. You have to be aloof and not reachable—playing golf, for example. You don’t even want to make a deal within a criminally short deadline that will not be extended under any circumstance.
The media actually helps you here—they regurgitate all the obvious idiocies in your false flags and make you look even more unpredictable and foolish. The little countries are so dependent on the US that once you have them in the room, you can just dictate terms and extort them—strong morals there are none, it’s about the outcome. The real deals that matter are China and the EU. How do you weaken their position before negotiations start? You take away their cards.
China is the factory for the US—they both need each other. So you lie your absolute tits off. The US would make for a much better factory than China, you say. It would be no problem at all—in fact, it would be the preferred solution if the US was the manufacturing power it once was. China loses a strong card in the negotiations if they believe you believe it.
China also plays the game. They try to form an alliance, get commitments from South Korea and Japan that they will fight the unjust tariffs together. But again, you take away that card too. Conveniently, it comes out that first Japan and now South Korea are already eager to make a deal.
The EU doesn’t even pretend to try and play the game—they are internally too disorganized to mount a strong defense. They appeal to higher authority and morals and all that good stuff. In the end, they need you more than you need them.
And that’s how it can end: a great many deals, and a few trade imbalances and tariffs left, with one main benefactor—the US and its dealmaker-in-chief.
But there are many risks. The courts cannot intervene—that’s important. Congress cannot intervene, or the plan is toast. You have to put the fear of God into anyone that goes in that direction or, if they catch on quick, try to give them covert hints about the whole idea.