The Witness Chronicles, 4/4/25

Madness

Apr 04, 2025

a skull with a crown on top of it — Photo by Payton Tuttle on Unsplash

The Trump Crash is the Only Real Thing About These Tariffs

He is totally delusional

I have said this way too many times, but every time I think they have gone as far as they can go, they prove me wrong. In just the last week we have had Signalgate, where Trump’s entire national security team compromised the safety of US service members, the Musk total fail in Michigan, and now the Trump Market crash as markets respond to his insane tariff ‘strategy’.

As I write this the NASDAQ is down 6% and all the other indices are crashing. That’s the single biggest drop since 2020 and that was during the peak of the Covid pandemic. Trump’s reaction? Nothing there to look at, move on, no that’s not a train wreck you’re seeing. Everything is hunky-dory.

So, how does Trump’s argument that tariffs will raise trillions for the country hold up? He put numbers out there yesterday but the formula they used to calculate returns is not the way economists calculate these kinds of things. They simply made up a formula that would create the numbers they want to brag about. And those same economists are describing this as mind-bogglingly stupid and incompetent.

But mind-bogglingly stupid describes virtually every action of the administration, including those mentioned above, and people are starting to finally notice. I didn’t even mention RFK Jr’s total destruction of all the Departments of Health and Human Services, the largest agency in the government. Frankly I cannot stand the sight or voice of that man, a person who is obviously seriously mentally ill.

There’s a lot of that going around in the White House these days. You could call it the Trump Virus and put it next to the coming Trump Recession, and the Trump Crash. And I challenge anyone to tell me one good thing that has come out of that White House, but there is one condition: you must tell the truth as verified by outside experts.

That, of course, is not going to happen, ever. They long ago abandoned any pretense to the truth.

Even if we could magically get rid of these people, it is going to take a lot of work and will to put the government back together in a better way. Right now I’m not seeing the will required to even fight back, not from the majority of Congress, but we are seeing a few cracks in the wall of loyalty maintained by the Republican Party.

Four GOP senators peeled away from the party line and joined Democrats to pass a bill strengthening the spending oversight powers of Congress. But House Speaker Johnson will not even bring the bill before the House, so it dies there. So much for action.

The foreign response to the massive and widespread tariffs is predictably awful and already we are seeing the beginning of a global trade war. I have said that these Trump people seem incapable of doing anything with any degree of competence. But they are very good at one thing.

They are great at creating fear and uncertainty across our country and across the planet. When consumers and producers are filled with uncertainty they often put things on hold, and we get stagflation. The economy essentially grinds to a halt as people wait until they see positive progress before spending any more than necessary.

Part of the problem with all this stuff is that many Americans are woefully ignorant about even the most basic elements of economics, understandable, as it is not exactly the most exciting topic. But there are men and women in the Trump administration who are experts and somehow they have swallowed any pride left and find themselves spouting dangerous nonsense to please the President.

That’s a choice between supporting truth, the law, and the Constitution, and loyalty to a lunatic. They need to know we are not going to forget that choice and when we regain power, and we will, their voices will be reviled and forgotten.

Right now it would require longer term thinking for that to sink in and longer term thinking is forbidden in the Trump White House.

This Saturday will see the first attempt to create a national protest with the theme Hands Off. I admit I am skeptical because I see no evidence that Trump cares about protests like this and I’m not hearing much excitement about it. And the protests we have had in my town seem to be the same small group of people who seemingly are protesting something all the time.

Frankly, and this extremely cynical, no one pays any attention to those folks, as well meaning as they may be. This is not the sixties. Which brings me to something that perplexes me. Where is the outrage and anger? I know people feel it but it also feels like we can’t see what will change things.

And that is intentional on the part of Trump and the Project 2025 people. They have methodically dismantled the system of checks and balances by corrupting members of the Supreme Court and rendering Congress helpless through intimidation, brainwashing, and threats. And they followed that with Trump’s apparent choice to simply ignore court orders completely.

His total politicization of the Department of Justice backs him up by ignoring the rule of law instead of enforcing it, a complete breakdown of the justice and law enforcement system. Tell me this was not all planned.

Is there a silver lining in this or is it all darkness? In my view there is and that is a vulnerability they cannot control, the state of the economy. Trump was elected on two issues, the border and prices/inflation. They have taken such a draconian approach to the immigration issue that it is starting to leave a bad taste in the mouths of Americans. And even before taking office Trump gave up on prices.

Now, with the impending global trade wars, the incredible uncertainty, and the incomprehensible and ever-changing tariff ‘policy’, markets are roiling, prices are already showing signs of skyrocketing, and people are watching their savings evaporate. The possibility that Social Security payments may not show up is scaring the hell out of a lot of people, including this writer.

When we see billionaires with unlimited resources living it up while we scramble to pay bills, we get angry, and that is happening. Personally I think a spending boycott would be the most effective protest movement. But it may not require organization because people are already cutting back in spending due to all this uncertainty.

This week Apple and Amazon combined lost something like $500 billion in market value, an astoundingly huge loss that is going to get a lot of those billionaires’ attention. Trump can smile and claim that wonderful things are happening but here on the ground we are not seeing it. The opposite in fact.

As I write this, it is day two after tariffs and today at midday markets across the board are down another 5%, which is getting us very close to recession territory.

So the most effective thing we can do right now is something we are probably already doing, cutting back drastically on spending. And then, if public protests explode in anger at high costs, grab a sign and join in, yell at your elected officials, and hope that the courtiers turn on the mad king.

The Witness Chronicles, politics decoded

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