The Witness Chronicles, 4/10/25

Trump’s epic fail

Apr 10, 2025

body of water — Photo by Nong on Unsplash

Tough Guy President Caves When His Liberation Day Fails Immediately

Boy, that didn’t take long

Trump can’t take the heat, plain and simple. If there was a shred of strategy behind all this tariff mayhem, we wouldn’t be seeing this wild seesawing back and forth, seemingly at random.

It’s obvious that the tariff threats were nothing more than a crude attempt to extort deals from anyone who would step up and beg Donnie to stop. And when the world didn’t just cave into him and the markets crashed, his bluff was called.

The real proof that Trump is a terrible negotiator is his inconsistency. While putting the tariffs on hold for ninety days, he once again raised tariffs on the second largest economy on the planet, China. China did not take the bait so Trump threw another hissy fit and raised the tariffs to 125%.

Who will that hurt? Basically every small business, every big business, every large retailer, and every consumer here in the States. China produces an enormous number of products that affect every aspect of our economy. Yes, this will hurt China, removing their largest customer. But we cannot replace the products produced there overnight and if we do they will be much more expensive.

All this crap proves that Trump’s stated goal of bringing manufacturing back to the US is baloney. As long as he keeps changing the game, no responsibile business will begin planning large investments in new plants or business growth. There is simply too much uncertainty and the Trump economy, if you can call it that, is obviously being made up as he goes.

Bond markets were also getting hit, adding to the chaos. And it didn’t help that the billionaires who have funded Trump have been universal in their criticism of the entire tariff plan, predicting an immediate recession. Undoubtedly, many Republicans in Congress have been pressuring the White House as panic sets in and midterms approach.

Lost in all this financial news are other realities, including the climate, which is completely haywire right now. The Trump administration, under the cover of his chaos, has been ending virtually every climate initiative across the country and the globe. They are also going after state climate protections and this week removed all regulations on the mining and burning of coal, the dirtiest of the fossil fuels, by far.

Their denial of that reality is perhaps the most cynical and vindictive of the Trump actions, because these changes most directly affect the same voters who supported Trump, often hitting rural and mountainous areas the hardest with extreme flooding, tornados, and wildfires.

But we already know that Trump does not care about those people and never has. The question is, will they figure that out before they lose their jobs, their homes, and their government benefits? The MAGA movement is the product of a massive brainwashing effort involving huge amounts of money, Fox News and other right wing media, Trump’s constant lying and fear mongering, and the efforts of extreme evangelical sects.

That’s not me being paranoid, it is the reality we are seeing emerge now that Trump no longer requires his voters. They did their job, now they are discards. The only people Trump cares about are the wealthy and big business management and when they turned on him this week, he gave in.

I think the most disturbing thing about all of this is that there does not appear to be any clear path to putting an end to it. We can protest, we can boycott, we can write and call, but if they don’t care and Republicans won’t act we only have limited options, very limited options.

One of those options is what we have seen going on in the markets this week. When things get this unstable, people tend to pull their money from everything but the most conservative investments. Obviously the market sell-offs got Trump’s attention. He sees them as indicators of his approval by his peers and that has not looked good.

The tariffs on China are immediately killing a huge chunk of the agriculture business. Farmers can’t stop growing the products they buy and new markets cannot take up the slack from China, by far the biggest buyer of American food products.

The strangest thing about this trade war is that it is entirely an issue that only exists in Donald Trump’s head. We had the best economy in the world only a few months ago, but his fantasy that others were doing terrible things to us has completely destroyed that reality in just a few weeks. The why is simply incomprehensible.

I watch the German and British news programs on PBS and their response is bewilderment, even naïveté. Many leaders seem to somehow think that Trump will eventually realize his mistakes and back down. But they seem blind to the fact that this man is not sane and is not reasonable. And the media here continues to cover him and his actions as though they make some kind of sense. It’s irresponsible to say the least.

Since I wrote this yesterday, I have been thinking about his actions and the only conclusion I can come to is that this man is simply an idiot who has intentionally built a bubble around himself so he can pretend he is some kind of genius. But bubbles are by nature frail and this week his appears to be bursting.

This is not to say he is not dangerous. Stupidity has started many wars and cost many their lives and livelihoods. And this time around he has surrounded himself with a band of fanatics who truly believe in their demented causes. That is the nature of fascism, but it is also its undoing.

Fanaticism only sees enemies and is incapable of compromise. We are seeing that this week as Trump veers back and forth and his people struggle to explain his actions. But he is playing with fire in his non-dealings with China. It appears that his piling on of tariffs is based on their refusal to kowtow and call him, begging for relief.

The Chinese are flexing their muscles and finding themselves strong at a time when the US is weakened by an utter failure of leadership on every level. This is a dangerous time that is entirely the creation of a man whose ego rules his every action.

This past weekend we saw widespread protests. Republican congresspeople, heretofore silent, began making noise about the actions of the President. White House stalwarts like Elon Musk and Peter Navarro started squabbling and insulting each other over the obvious failure of the tariffs. The billionaire financiers who have irresponsibly supported Trump seem to have woken up and realized just what they have done.

Trump demands unquestioning loyalty. But when the loyal start questioning and criticizing, he collapses. There is a lesson to be learned here. We must question his every move and call out his every failure. There are plenty of them. He simply cannot stand criticism. That is his weakness.

The Witness Chronicles, politics decoded

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