Chris Liss on Nostr: LOL, funny but totally absurd. Trump’s tariffs may work in the end, or they may ...

LOL, funny but totally absurd. Trump’s tariffs may work in the end, or they may not, but this is a poor “theory of mind” for someone who was elected president twice over the all-in objection of the most powerful factions in the world.

The idea he’s some total idiot is not just wrong, it’s moronic. He’s done lot of things in his life, had a lot of success (and some failure).

To believe he’d just destroy his legacy and his country over trying to “look tough” is not grappling with reality. He has a reason to believe what he believes — he’s been talking about trade imbalances for at least 30 years — and again, I have no idea whether his plan will succeed or fail.

But he has *some* credible plan, and he is the only president even attempting to deal with the $36T debt crisis in any way. I’m giving him a shot, and in any event the $11T in paper wealth is not real wealth anyway.

quoting
note1ee7…ceey

How did we get here?

Donald Trump tanked the economy based on a book his son-in-law found on Amazon.

He told Jared Kushner to find him an economic advisor—someone who could make him “look tough” and talk tough on China. Jared searched Amazon, saw a book called Death by China, and thought the title was “cool.” So he cold-called the author, Peter Navarro, and gave him a job.

Navarro had no real economic credibility—just an obsession with tariffs and a made-up expert named “Ron Vara” whom he cited repeatedly in his books.

Who’s Ron Vara? A fictional economist Navarro invented. It’s an anagram of his own name.

This is not a joke. This is literally how the Trump administration created its trade policy—one that wiped out $11 trillion in wealth, crashed markets, and is nearly sending the world into another Great Depression.

A fake expert. A book cover. An Amazon search.

That’s it. That’s how we got here.