Post

Teaching implies Trump wants to learn. He doesn’t. All he wants is to be right. Even if all the evidence shows the opposite. His misinformation network will keep saying that he’s right, and he won’t care who suffers. His supporters will view negative consequences as evidence of persecution.

He's had enough of Bankrupting Casinos, and so is now going for the entire Planet.

📌

Post-globalisation, isolation is difficult if not impossible to achieve unless you want to be North Korea Trying to roll back to a pre-globalisation time is like trying to uninvent something. It's not possible and it doesn't work. The global economy will reconfigure just as Europe did with Brexit.

The latter part has not been true for any other f**k up he has had, and he has had enough for that to be statistically significant.

You write as if you expect him to understand anything. He doesn’t, because he’s stupid, and he doesn’t care anyway.

I shouldn’t be surprised if Trump tries to repudiate the bonds held by China and EU countries as somehow being the instruments of their oppression of the United States Borrowing language used formerly to argue for debt relief for African nations would be entirely on brand

He's deranged

Very good, this bond/securities thing is new to me but it probably tells us where it all stands at the moment, knife edge !!

Very good piece. So when does he order the Fed to start printing money?

Give the amount of MAGA crap I’ve had to contend with, I’ve recently logged off of X and I’m guessing that you’re posting your response to the 90 Day pause on #TrumpsTarrifs on there first. Wondering what the rationale is & level of bullshit he’ll be presenting to explain the rowback as a ‘win.’

Will no one rid us of this meddling President?

A very good piece. Over too many years I've noticed public affairs companies spend a lot of time trying to explain the limits of US market power to US corporate execs. No country could force the US to act but that doesn't mean it can force the rest of the world to do so. Bond markets also.

This is how f*cked Murica is ...

Trump killed the goose.

China still has to play a careful game. They can't really threaten the fragile growth at home, but they can't be seen to publicly back down to Trump's threats. My guess is lots of public sabre rattling, but behind the scenes, multiple threats to GOP reps about selling off their $700B of American pie

Watching Trump at the moment is like watching a toddler with a box of matches, standing in front of his house that he has just set fire to!?! It is just starting to dawn on him, what he has actually done!!

He reminds me of a little guy in a bar trying to pick fights with everyone. Everyone’s trying to just avoid it but at some point they’ve had enough. I think we’ve hit that point now.

Well I don't know, did he and his billionaire mates buy a load of stock at bargain basement prices knowing that he was going to send the markets high again? Was this just a get rich quick scam all along?

Really thought provoking piece this.

Well that pod stayed up to date for a while then

Excellent writing. Thanks very much.

Some Republican Senators from farming states are murmuring about the effects of tariffs on agri exports to China, which are substantial but not very anti Trump yet. They're all joined at the hip to his MAGA brand.

youtu.be/XJgNHEp0u10?...

Is this his Suez moment!

broken link :(

I think what this piece misses is an understanding in the US that the status quo has to change. It rather assumes that there is a simple way by which US dependency on imports and foreign borrowing could be eased away. Like the withdrawal from Afghanistan, it has to be done quickly and painfully.

Trump failed to recognise that the markets are not sycophantic cowardly Republicans. The markets will do what they always do, REACT.

Superb analysis and writing as always...

Maybe that's why he tweeted that the senate "needs to get the tax cuts budget though now" because he sees that gap as a hole that won't fill anymore? (Personally I doubt he put all that together himself. Is just a bigger shopping trolley (boris), that we apply logic to where we shouldn't)

The US will never recoup what it has lost.

I always enjoy reading your pieces, and follow your sub stack. This one has impressed me so much that I have added you to my very short list of select accounts I must read every day.

There's a big mixed message here. His campaign slogan was (and is) Make America Great Again - which implies that it isn't great at the moment. Perhaps he should bear that in mind when trying to exert influence he hasn't got.

She learned but she can't admit she learned

China holds about 10% of US treasuries. Doesn't probably take everyone reacting, china could broadly stop if it chose to, letting them mature out, but declaring that that is what they are doing, and that reduction in demand would likely have a chunky impact.

He doesn’t misunderstand. He doesn’t care.

The picture alone is disturbing enough

The Orange Fascist doesn't care about American power. He only cares about his personal, dictatorial power.

Again and again, SCOTUS misunderstands the limits of presidential power.

Use of the work “hegemony” twice! Feels like Mr Sopel’s influence here

Don't hold your breath: bsky.app/profile/sahi...

Great piece, Lewis. Very helpful.

Trump fundamentally misunderstands the limits of American power..... Yeah, but fucking about to create stock price volatility has made him and his associates sheds full of cash

Remind me of the last time Trump said ‘Sorry, I got it wrong’ , the problem here is Trump and it will be someone else’s fault so who does he throw under the bus.

An excellent piece that challenges some shibboleths and a lot of complacency. "As of Wednesday afternoon, the markets were pricing 30 year Greek bonds as a less risky investment than American ones" is quite the eyebrow-raiser.

Misunderstands or just doesn't care?

... a pause to the tariffs (at least for countries which haven't retaliated) is being announced, which might be the first concession to reality (although I'm sure Trump will never admit to having blinked first).

Post u-turn thought. 10 days after her mini budget, market turmoil forced Truss to abandon her planned abolition of the 45% tax rate. On Liberation Day +7, after an unprecedented flight from US Treasury bonds, Trump put most of his +10% global tariffs on hold. Sure, iT wAs aLL pARt Of tHE pLaN.

Even adjacent to a lettuce would be a better “look”!

Superb: "The US is an economic superpower. But its economic power, like its political power, relied on its relationships with the rest of the world and structures it had built, rather than the power it might only wield itself"

Trump has only ever run one company as its sole decision maker. He ran that company into bankruptcy 7 times after losing the $45m startup funds daddy left him, destroyed two cash cow casinos. That’s when Putin got him and bailed him out. Trump sold out to Putin decades ago.