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Last Wednesday, standing at a podium in the White House Rose Garden, the president of the United States threw the world’s economy into turmoil. Having declared that America’s trade deficit represented a bona fide “emergency,” President Trump revealed a completely rewritten federal tariff regime. The result of these alterations was an increase in protectionist barriers that exceeded even the infamous Smoot-Hawley law in its scope.
For two days, the stock market responded to this move by diving sharply downward. Monday morning, after a false report that the president was planning to endorse a 90-day pause in implementation, there was a brief rally, but this ended when the administration made clear that it intended to stay the course. At present, more than $10 trillion of investment has been wiped out, and every stockholder in the world is watching the Oval Office in the hope of discovering what to do next. Apparently, l’état, c’est moi is in reruns.