A Myopic Gamble in a Broken Economy

There is a profound difference between governing and performing governance. One requires strategy, long-term planning, and an understanding of economic reality. The other requires nothing but an audience willing to mistake noise for action. Donald Trump, a man who has never built anything that did not eventually collapse under the weight of its own contradictions, has always preferred the latter.

His trade war, conducted through reckless tariffs and nationalist rhetoric, was never about economic revitalization. It was a political stunt masquerading as strategy, a desperate attempt to mask decades of American deindustrialization with a crude sledgehammer approach that ignored every economic reality of the 21st century.

For Trump’s tariffs to work, America would need an isolated, self-sufficient economy capable of absorbing the blowback from a trade war. But America is no longer that country—if it ever was. Its manufacturing base has been hollowed out. Its supply chains stretch across multiple continents. It no longer produces the bulk of the goods it consumes. This is not the 1980s economy of Reagan, and Trump is no Reagan. He is, at best, a distorted imitation, a man wielding tactics that only functioned in an era long past, using them now in a world where they are actively destructive.

Tariffs, in the most basic sense, are taxes on imports. The idea behind them is simple: raise the price of foreign goods so that domestically produced goods can compete more easily. But that idea only works if you actually produce enough domestically to replace those foreign goods. The United States does not. Over the last forty years, corporate America deliberately outsourced manufacturing, gutting the industrial sector in exchange for cheap overseas labor and higher profits. The result is an economy that is structurally dependent on imports.

Trump did not rebuild that industrial base before launching his trade war. He did not invest in new manufacturing, did not create a workforce prepared to take back production from foreign markets. Instead, he declared war without a battle plan, weaponizing tariffs without securing any advantage. In the same way Regan legislated the Emergency Medical Treatment Act with no provision to pay for it. The result was predictable: American businesses and consumers absorbed the cost.

The most devastating impact was felt in automobiles, agriculture, and retail—three industries that, in theory, should have been the backbone of an economic resurgence but instead bore the brunt of Trump’s incompetence.

The Auto Industry: A Self-Inflicted Wound

Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum were meant to protect American metal manufacturers from cheap foreign competition, but they ended up punishing the very industries that relied on those materials. American automakers—who depend on steel and aluminum imports—were suddenly paying more for the raw materials needed to build their cars. Costs skyrocketed, and companies like Ford and GM were forced to either raise prices, cut jobs, or move production overseas. They chose all three.

A tariff designed to protect American industry should not force American companies to relocate manufacturing outside of the country. Yet that is exactly what happened. Ford estimated that Trump’s trade war cost the company over $1 billion, forcing layoffs and plant closures. The auto industry did not revive under Trump’s tariffs—it suffered under them.

The Farmers: First Forgotten, Then Bought Off

Nowhere was the failure of Trump’s trade policy more evident than in American agriculture. His tariffs on China were meant to punish the country for trade imbalances, but China retaliated swiftly, imposing its own tariffs on American soybeans, pork, and dairy. The result? Farmers lost their largest overseas market overnight.

For decades, China had been the biggest buyer of American soybeans. The agricultural sector was built around this trade relationship. But when tariffs hit, China turned to Brazil instead. American farmers, unable to sell their crops, were left drowning in surplus, watching their profits evaporate.

Rather than admit failure, Trump did what he always does: he tried to buy his way out of responsibility. He threw billions in subsidies at farmers, essentially paying them to endure the very problem he had created. But subsidies are not a market, and they are not a strategy. The damage was already done.

Retail & Consumer Goods: The Hidden Tax on American Households

Perhaps the most overlooked failure of Trump’s tariffs was their direct impact on everyday American consumers. When you tax imports, you increase prices. It is that simple. And because American retailers rely heavily on foreign-made goods—clothing, electronics, home appliances—those increased costs were passed directly to consumers.

Walmart, Target, and Best Buy all saw their costs rise. American shoppers were unknowingly paying for Trump’s trade war every time they went to the store. A tariff is a tax, but it is a tax paid in the checkout aisle, by families who saw no benefit from it.

The Fatal Miscalculation: America is Not an Industrial Superpower Anymore

Had Trump understood the economy he was dealing with, he would have realized that tariffs were doomed from the start. The United States is not the industrial superpower of the mid-20th century. It does not have the production capacity to replace the goods it taxes.

Compare this to China, the country Trump claimed he would crush with tariffs. China has a self-sustaining industrial economy. It produces what it consumes. It manufactures what it exports. It could endure a trade war far better than the United States, because it had something Trump never gave America: an economic foundation strong enough to survive the storm.

Trump’s failure wasn’t just in his ignorance of global trade dynamics—it was in his fundamental misunderstanding of America’s economic weaknesses. He believed he could act from a position of strength, when in reality, he exposed the country’s fragility.

This Is Not Reagan’s Economy, and Trump Is No Reagan

Reagan, for all his flaws, understood the importance of strategic economic positioning. His policies, though deeply flawed in their own way, were at least structured within the reality of the American economy of his time. Trump, in contrast, applied tactics that had no place in the modern world, treating economic policy like a casino bet, assuming that his bravado would be enough to force victory.

Reagan operated in an economy where America still made what it needed. Trump’s economy was a shell, dependent on imports, weakened by decades of corporate greed—a reality he did nothing to correct before throwing the country into a trade war it could not win.

Trump’s Chaos Presidency: A Party That Does Not Govern, But Performs

Trump’s tariffs were not an accident. They were part of a governing philosophy that is not actually about governing at all. The modern Republican Party does not legislate in any meaningful way. It does not seek to build policy based on data, economic reality, or long-term planning. Instead, it thrives on chaos, spectacle, and grievance politics.

Tariffs, as executed by Trump, were not about economic recovery. They were about cultivating resentment, about telling the American worker that their suffering was someone else’s fault. And when the policy failed, as it inevitably would, that failure would not be admitted—it would be reframed as proof that the “deep state,” or China, or the Democrats were somehow sabotaging what should have worked.

This is not governance. It is a sustained assault on reality itself.

Trump’s tariffs did not fail because of poor execution. They failed because they were built on a foundation of delusion. A country that does not produce enough to sustain itself cannot wage a trade war from a position of power. A political movement that does not legislate, that does not plan, that does not even believe in the mechanisms of governance, cannot fix a country that is already in decline.

Trump’s tariffs were not an economic strategy. They were a declaration of war against a future he and his followers cannot accept. A future where America is no longer an empire, no longer an industrial titan, no longer the myth it pretends to be. And for a movement that cannot govern, cannot legislate, and cannot adapt, the only choice left is to burn the entire thing down.