The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

Donald Trump’s beautiful, very classy trade war is working exactly as designed: Volkswagen is axing up to 100,000 jobs in Europe while Audi drops $4bn on a new SUV factory in Macon, Georgia, and Trump gets to turn the announcement into a live campaign infomercial days before the midterms. US auto employment is actually down since he took office, but why let numbers ruin a perfectly good rally where a German CEO flies in to bless Dear Leader’s tariffs on stage.

Volkswagen says Trump’s tariffs are costing it up to €5bn a year, so naturally the solution is to build 200,000 massive petrol SUVs in the US—including the new Q9, a sort of luxury climate arson device—because Trump is actively kneecapping EVs in favor of bigger, dumber gas-burners. Europe and Mexico eat the job losses, Trump gets to cosplay as a blue-collar savior while he jacks up fuel prices with his Iran adventure, and the planet gets another fleet of rolling carbon grenades. Truly, an economic masterstroke: socialized pain abroad, privatized applause at a campaign rally.

The White House has graciously announced that, starting 30 October, it will stop punching some Canadian products in the face and will instead punch different Canadian products in the face. Plywood, paper, machinery, and refrigeration gear are getting a break, while valves, carpets, and waste products get promoted to the front lines of Trump’s economic hostage situation. It’s less a trade strategy and more like spinning a tariff roulette wheel and calling it leadership.

Why the sudden burst of generosity toward Canadian plywood? The Wall Street Journal reports that the exemptions, conveniently focused on agricultural and forestry products, are designed to help Susan Collins and other Republicans survive the midterms. Collins rushed out a statement bragging that she had "secured" exemptions for products vital to Maine’s farmers — blueberry, potato, apple, and seaweed producers — because nothing says free-market conservatism like begging the Dear Leader to temporarily stop wrecking your constituents’ livelihoods.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney politely noted that Canada is open to a mutually beneficial deal but is also perfectly willing to wait for a future US administration that isn’t trying to run trade policy like a reality show stunt. Meanwhile, Michigan Republican Mike Rogers, who spent months cheering on the tariffs in campaign ads, is now calling on Trump to end the standoff after discovering that his trade-reliant state actually relies on, tragically, trade. The leopards-ate-my-face caucus remains stunned that the leopard has teeth.

So the US isn’t really ending the trade war with Canada, it’s just rearranging which industries get kneecapped so a few nervous Republicans can film campaign ads about how hard they fought to fix the mess their own party made. Strong, coherent economic policy this is not; it’s vote-buying with tariffs and hoping nobody notices the bill.

The Trump administration has discovered a bold new form of agricultural policy: wake up, panic about grocery prices, and randomly blow a hole in the market with an executive order. After jacking up uncertainty with a trade war that helped China slash U.S. beef purchases, Trump has now "rescued" consumers by temporarily suspending tariffs on 300,000 metric tons of imported beef and ordering it sold at 25% below market price. Because nothing says "free market conservatism" like the White House dictating discount meat prices by fiat.

Out in Iowa, cattlemen like Scott Birker are watching years of tight-margin work get bulldozed so Trump can maybe shave 50 cents off a pound of ground beef before the midterms. Economists point out the obvious: surprise imports crash prices, torch producer confidence, and push ranchers to send breeding stock to slaughter instead of rebuilding herds — guaranteeing higher prices later. So the administration’s grand plan is to wreck long-term U.S. beef production to score a short-term talking point on Fox, then act stunned when rural voters who backed him start realizing that "economic populism" apparently means they’re the ones getting slaughtered.

Kansas, where Republicans once won Senate races by the same margin as church potlucks, is now seriously flirting with sending a Democrat to the U.S. Senate for the first time in nearly a century. All it took was eight years of Trump-world economics: tariffs kicking farmers in the teeth, fuel prices punching everyone else in the wallet, and a "second term agenda" so unpopular that even deep-red wheat fields are starting to look a little bluish.

Sen. Roger Marshall, a loyal Trump barnacle, is suddenly in a toss-up against Adam Hamilton, an "independent-minded Democrat" whose main campaign message seems to be: what if we tried basic decency and slightly less economic arson? Meanwhile, Republicans are hoping to reclaim the governor's mansion, because nothing says "we've learned from Sam Brownback" like handing the keys back to the party that already stress-tested the state budget to the brink of collapse.

Trump is swooping into Wichita to campaign for Marshall and the rest of the ticket, presumably to remind Kansans exactly why their fuel is expensive, their exports are hostage to tariffs, and their politics now resemble a hostage negotiation. Both parties are dumping tens of millions into the state, but the real plot twist is simpler: when your second-term policies are so toxic that Kansas starts considering a Democratic senator, the brand might be less "conservative movement" and more "controlled demolition."

Trump hopped on Truth Social to announce that AI doesn’t need guardrails because it already has the ultimate safeguard: a “STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT”—which is an interesting way to describe the guy who then threatened to cut off all trade with any country the U.S. runs a deficit with if the Fed doesn’t slash interest rates. Yes, the president basically said he’d blow up global supply chains and U.S. manufacturing because Jerome Powell won’t give him 1% money and a cookie.

He followed that up with the claim that if America stopped trading with every deficit country (so, almost everyone), we’d somehow "make" $1.5 trillion a year, because in his brain "deficit" is just a fancy word for LOSS. Under this kindergarten math, Americans importing $1bn in French wine while exporting $1bn less in bourbon isn’t a trade pattern, it’s us mailing France a giant sack of cash and crying. Economists pointed out that this is deranged, but Trump is too busy promising 14–20% GDP growth if the Fed just detonates price stability on command.

Meanwhile, he’s bullying the Fed to slash rates to 1% while inflation is still a problem, then bragging he’d deliver miracle growth numbers the U.S. hasn’t seen outside of the weird statistical whiplash of the 2020 pandemic collapse-and-reopen quarter. The same "very stable genius" who vowed to lower prices on day one has now managed higher prices, slower growth, and a standing threat to tank farmers, manufacturers, and homebuilders by nuking trade with China, Mexico, Taiwan, and the EU. Congressional Republicans, naturally, are either cheering this on or staring at their shoes while he test-drives economic policy like a drunk in a demolition derby.