Cracks

 Economic nationalism was always going to be at the heart of Trump's second presidency. "Economic nationalism" is a broad enough concept that it can cover a multitude of positions. The idea of renegotiating trade terms with certain countries is perhaps not unwarranted, though any effort to do so would necessarily have trade offs for a limited amount of gain for the US. 

Trump's Liberation Day is so far and above any reasonable effort to rebalance trade, that any common ground with mere free trade skeptics (as opposed to those who share Trump's pathological anger at other countries) has eroded so fast it's dizzying. 

Yes, lots of people talked themselves into the idea that Trump 2.0 would track with Trump 1.0, and you can both understand but not condone that reasoning. Trump is so bonkers and erratic on any given subject at any given time that you could convince yourself that he wouldn't REALLY do what he was saying he was going to do. However, and we are seeing this in so many areas, why in the fuck would you take that chance? Trump says he wants to "be a dictator in day one," and some people took it as a metaphor. It wasn't, but maybe it wasn't worth risking everything?

What we are seeing are markets responding to these events while still thinking that he will back down. Project 2025 talks about rebalancing trade, but the mechanisms to do so look nothing like the chaotic and illogical actions we saw on Wednesday. 

The NASDAQ in particular is getting hammered, as it is off 25% from high of 20,204. That's the primary exchange for tech stocks, companies that have grown up entirely in the world of integrated global trade.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk has come out in favor of basically free trade between the US and the EU. I'm guessing there are a lot of conservative figures who thought Trump would force countries to lower their tariffs. But if you look at he crazy chart, he's not trying to reduce other countries tariffs; he's looking to reduce the trade deficit with that country.

And that's insane and, you know, bad. Americans are not clamoring to go back to the textile mills of their great grandparents, nor are Americans interested in paying the premium for those American made goods. Some conservative commentators seem to share that sentiment. Ben Shapiro, Ben Domenech and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal have all come out against these tariffs. Former Republican politicians who no longer feel the need to kiss Trump's ring have said they are nuts.

The Wingnut Wurlitzer is still trying to crank out a happy tune, but if we really do tip over into an honest to Dog recession, all bets are off.

Around 2007, the signs of the housing bubble were becoming apparent. In March, Bear Stearns would collapse. The Iraq war had become, pick your metaphor, a quagmire or a millstone. What happened, as Bush receded into his lame duck period and eventually a sort of hermetic post-presidency, was that Dubya was memory-holed. As the blogger Digby put it at the time, "Conservatism can never fail, it can only BE failed." Bush failed, giving us Obama. If Trump really does crater the economy, Republicans should get wiped out in 2026. 

Trump cannot run again. His blathering on the possibility that he will are partly his monumental ego and partly his hope to keep nervous Republicans in line.

If we tip into a recession - and the lights are blinking red - then at some point, those cracks become fissures and those fissures canyons.