President Trump has tried three sequential ways to inflict tariffs on U.S. consumers under the guise of punishing trading partners with misuses of retaliatory ratios, alleged unfair trade practices, and emergency economic powers — but as with saber rattling and swords of Greenland, Venezuela, and Iran — the question is not just why, but why now?
As we write about in our instant New York Times bestseller, Trump’s Ten Commandments, Donald Trump only has so many tricks up his sleeve; and his latest trade and tariff tantrums reflect yet another diversionary maneuver as part of his “Wall of Sound” — his perpetual noise machine of constant, overwhelming distractions to divert attention away from bad news.
For Trump, good news has been hard to come by of late amidst a seeming cascade of bad headlines.
Trump was humiliated by raucous boos showering down upon him at the World Cup as he was pushed off stage while jockeying for a central photo position with the Spanish team he publicly disparaged while cheering for their rival Argentina.
Earlier this month, he was upstaged over Independence Day weekend by Taylor Swift’s glamorous, mellifluous, joyous, unifying wedding bash, which he mocked, in contrast to his angry divisive egomaniacal bellicose growls as he tried to coopt the 250th celebration by rebranding it around himself. Since last November, he has implausibly claimed that affordability is a hoax amidst persistently high prices, even as 3 million files are still unreleased related to convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
