It’s Trump’s fantasy, we’re just living in it

Every global market will reflect his smallest gesture or remark. Every stock and every trade. Every head of state must respond to him, and come with begging bowl.

Trump has shifted the global economy. Trump’s tariffs have upended the global order. Trump is committed to these tariffs, and he won’t negotiate. Trump is going to use this disruption as leverage when he negotiates. Trump is trying to crash the markets. Trump is trying to crash the dollar. Trump will fix the trade deficit. Trump wants to reindustrialise America. Trump will … Trump is … Trump thinks …

No-one is sure what Trump is doing, because none of his explanations for the tariffs make any rational sense. They’re not reciprocal tariffs, because they’re not calculated on the basis of existing tariff rates. They’re calculations based on trade deficits, which are altogether different. But why are we even looking for economic sense?

Does Trump really want America to become a country that makes its own cheap T-shirts and plastic toys? He wants America to become a sweatshop, even though it’s currently deporting its cheap labour? Or will America make more expensive T-shirts and consume less altogether and everyone will cheer?

Trump says that factories are coming back to America. The new high taxes are there to stay, and that’s all the stability and incentive that long-term investment requires apparently. But Trump’s also, maybe, going to negotiate with individual nations if they’re nice to America, we’ll just have to wait and see, you never know. So … the US tariff rates may come down again (if other nations reduce trade barriers that only exist in Trump’s fantasy charts).

Companies are going to build these factories from scratch, even though they’re suddenly paying massive tariffs on all the parts needed to build a factory. Or – the other option – Americans will start producing from scratch every component that makes up a factory, using resources that escape tariffs because they’re American-sourced. Iron ore, oil, tin, lithium, rubber – born in America. And this will happen soon?!

American companies are also going to mine rare earths and diamonds … in America. Grow coffee, cocoa and cinnamon. Plant avocado trees, so that in ten years Americans will have (more expensive) avocados. Or does he mean that Americans will consume far less of these in the future while producing far more other things? No doubt the investment dollars will pour in from around the world, just as soon as the market recovers, the anger subsides, and consumer and business confidence returns.

Trump is a stable genius using tariffs to establish primacy over China and other economic rivals. But also putting tariffs on allies. But who are America’s allies, and will they get a better deal? Regardless of these kinks, the constantly shifting market conditions will somehow produce the stability that will make a trading nation a great producer again.

America will win trade wars against every single nation on earth at the same time, even while the nations it is fighting have only a single opponent. And this will lead to … less trade.

None of it, obviously, makes any economic sense.

But Trump’s motivations are all too clear. They have nothing to do with economics.

Trump is not thinking about complex strategies or theories about comparative advantage, or the geostrategic implications of trade patterns. He’s not staring at spreadsheets and analyzing the data. His views on such things were formed fifty years ago, and haven’t shifted in the face of all evidence since. He’s a narcissist, to a sociopathic degree; the thing he’s always been interested in more than anything else – by a long shot – is himself. Himself as leading man, as the dominant character in the headlines, on TV, in social media, on the stage, under the lights, on the golf course. Always and only him.

His global tariffs were announced, first and foremost, to make him not just the centre of American life, but the centre of all global attention – now and forever. (Was Elon getting too much attention? Was Project 2025 getting too much credit? Were the territorial threats against Greenland and Canada wearing off?)

Will he shift the tariffs now, or won’t he? Every global market will reflect his smallest gesture or remark. Every stock and every trade. Every head of state must respond to him, and come to him with begging bowl. Every bipartisan negotiation is about him. His every whim is an international story, as is every reaction to him. Even his golf game on the weekend is a major drama. There cannot be enough headlines. And this will never stop, not if it has anything to do with him.

There is no grand plan. There is no strategy. There’s no guessing what he’ll do next, and his staff and cabinet don’t know either. The uncertainty is the point. It doesn’t even seem to matter to Trump what damage he causes, to Americans or to anyone. More attention is his objective and only significant measure of achievement. (As if proving that headlines are more important to him than stock markets: he spent his first term talking about how the stock market was rising; now, its movement up or down is irrelevant.)

The tariff negotiations will continue ad infinitum and the dramas will only escalate because his modus operandi is to keep things permanently unstable. His status as the “one who decides” – and its headline-generating capacity – is the forever-basis of his power. His psyche is totalitarian, and no-one in his team will try to rein him in, because the attention he attracts is the basis of their power too.

There’s no point waiting until he makes his mind up or things settle down. Nothing will disrupt his desire to disrupt, because he will never change. He is a one-man stress test for America’s institutions, laws, authorities, principles, relationships, society, politics. And now the world’s too. How long will it take people to figure this out? Is anyone passing the Trump test?