Why Did Donald Trump Shoot the Economy in the Thigh?

Because of an idea

President Donald Trump holds up a chart while speaking during a “Make America Wealthy Again” trade announcement event in the Rose Garden at the White House on April 2, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

I was deep into writing a more personal essay for today about some news on the Linker home front when the reality of “Liberation Day” was revealed to the country and the world. Once again, our Mad King has intruded into all of our lives to such an extent that at this moment I can’t possibly publish a lighter post focused on myself. So my apolitical essay will have to wait for another day.

I’ll start with something my friend Noah Millman said to me in a text message on Wednesday afternoon as we both struggled to absorb the magnitude of harm the president was inflicting on the American (and global) economy: This is Trump’s Iraq War—an act of immense destructiveness inspired by dogmatic ideological conviction. (John Judis made a similar point on Substack soon after.) George W. Bush and his team couldn’t be talked out of their certainty that toppling Saddam Hussein would produce wonderful consequences for all interested parties—the Iraqi people, the Greater Middle East, the U.S., the world. They were so sure about it that they wouldn’t countenance any contrary argument or evidence that might have complicated or undermined their faith. They were immune to having their minds changed.

So it is with Donald Trump when it comes to trade deficits (they mean “we’re getting screwed”) and tariffs (they force us to be free from an open system of international trade). He hates the former (for reasons that reveal his macroeconomic illiteracy) and loves the latter (ditto). When he was just a real-estate magnate and New York socialite with a rich daddy (1987), he told the world his ill-informed opinions on these subjects in a newspaper ad. But today he’s president of the United States and an aspiring autocrat who gets to act on his private theories of international trade by declaring an (imaginary) emergency that gives him the authority to shoot the economy in the thigh. So that’s what he’s done. And Congress, which could easily vote to rescind the tariffs, will do nothing, because members of the president’s party would rather watch him inflict serious harm on the country than risk standing up to and defying him.

Which means, this is like the Iraq War. Only far worse—for us, and for the world.

In the Grip of an Idea