The world is shocked by Trump’s tariff tantrums — it shouldn’t be  

The vibe is deteriorating in America, and it isn’t just because the stock market has vaporized over $11 trillion since Donald Trump’s inauguration. Even loyalists like hedge fund manager Bill Ackman now seem terrified of the erratic hell storm they’ve unleashed. Once one of Trump’s praisers-in-chief, Ackman recently likened the president’s nonstop policy chaos to an “economic nuclear winter.”  

That’s hardly a sign of confidence in the Trump administration, but anyone who paid attention during the 2024 campaign (or at any point during Trump’s career) saw it coming. What Trump promised during the last campaign was a presidency that did away with the political restrictions of ideology or the rule of law. Instead, Trump promised to govern by vengeance. It was always going to be this bad, and things will get worse still. 

What we are witnessing is the end result of a presidency where values are fluid and transactional, expertise is irrelevant and our national credibility is an afterthought. If Trump dedicated half as much effort to governing as he does to sowing chaos, America might be on track for his promised Golden Age. Instead, we’re riding the express train to a preventable national decline. 

Trump’s incoherent and self-harming trade war is as good a place as any to spot the ideological hollowness of today’s Republican Party. Not only do Trump’s tariffs spit in the face of anything remotely recognizable as “pro-business,” the White House’s bogus math is a rejection of economics entirely. Even the president’s own advisers can’t explain his logic, leading to a cascade of humiliating cable news appearances that only weakened global trust in America’s economic stability. 

It’s clear that Trump wants to cleave America’s economic policy away from the decades of orthodoxy that preceded it. Less discussed (and even more important) is Trump’s desire to replace that system with one in which he is the nation’s dealmaker-in-chief, where all trade policy runs through the White House — not Congress, as the Constitution specifies — and in which every trade deal becomes a machismo contest with America’s trading partners. For their part, lawmakers have been only too eager to hand off the hard work of trade policy to unelected White House functionaries. 

That kind of approach makes Trump feel important, and making Trump feel important is the lynchpin of his presidency. But at what cost?  

The laws and protocols and structures that Trump disdains are in fact the main reason America has enjoyed nearly a century as the great safe haven for global capital. Laws and processes create trust, trust creates stability, and stability creates economic growth. By letting Trump play the Big Man, Republicans have taken a sledgehammer to the nation’s credibility as a sane business partner. 

Tesla CEO and Trump guru Elon Musk recently pleaded with the president to step back from his destructive trade war, but even that will come with a hangover effect. Say Trump listens to Musk and decides to immediately cancel all of his promised tariffs. What message would that send to global trade partners who have watched Trump declare, revise, repeal, replace and then double down on tariff policy — all in less than 100 days? That’s not the behavior of a stable or trustworthy trading partner, and world leaders would justifiably have no reason to assume any of Trump’s treaties, trade deals or promises are worth the paper they’re printed on.  

That will come with major global ramifications — mainly a worldwide search for other markets to backstop any potential Trump temper tantrum. The main beneficiaries of that search will be in the European Union and China, both of whom are already adjusting their trade policies to appear more attractive on the world stage. If anything is likely to unintentionally kickstart the Chinese Century, it will be Trump’s shortsighted trade war. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill should think seriously about what that kind of shift would mean for American prosperity in the decades to come. 

It may be inconceivable to imagine an America divorced from its exceptionalism. It may seem crazy to think that nations would ever voluntarily choose to seek their trade elsewhere. But that’s because Americans have spent the post-World War II years basking in the glow of an economic system that enriched our nation and enabled the highest standard of living in the history of mankind. The decision to embrace and strengthen the postwar economic system was a choice made by politicians. So was Trump’s decision to demolish it.  

We’ve been given a preview of what that new world of Trumponomics looks like, and it’s a nightmare vision from a world where international relationships are frayed and the rules of economics are breaking down. We rejected that dismal world nearly a century ago. We must do so again. 

Max Burns is a veteran Democratic strategist and founder of Third Degree Strategies.