I'm convinced Trump is 100% sincere in his belief that his economic ideas are brilliant and will lead the US to a golden age.
I think his (and much of the far right's) mind is characterized by:
- a deep incuriosity and unwillingness to learn about the world
- extreme overconfidence in his own judgment
- an understanding of the world as being pervasively zero-sum (shared with Putin); your loss = his win
- obsessive preoccupation with the dynamics of humiliation: he feels an extreme need to be perceived as strong and to humiliate his enemies, and he greatly fears being humiliated
I feel like these characteristics explain most of his policy. The idea of tariffs arises from his zero-sum mindset: the only way to gain is by making someone else lose. This is of course factually wrong, but he's too incurious to learn from history or economics. And, of course, he's massively overconfident, so the thought that someone else could know better does not occur to him. And once the ball is rolling, his fear of humiliation will ensure that he has to stay the course. His perceived enemies (which is everyone) have to come crawling to his throne, begging to have their tariffs reduced while praising his brilliant policies, and then he might consider it. So if that doesn't happen, his only options are (a) perpetually retaliating with ever-increasing tariffs, disregarding the consequences entirely; or (b) capitulating in the trade war (lowering or abolishing tariffs) while not admitting that it's a capitulation ("don't worry, my brilliant policy fixed the mass influx of fentanyl and illegal immigrants from Canada, so now we can drop the tariffs on Sri Lanka" or something similarly incoherent).
He’s a spoilt brat who’s never been told no. That’s all it is. He grew up rich. He’s never had to develop himself or face adversity. He’s even been able to fail, over and over again, and still come out on top.
That only explains part of his behavior. Something peculiar to Trump's mindset is the pervasiveness of zero-sum thinking. There is nothing about growing up spoiled that necessarily creates this mindset; in fact I'd expect the opposite (by which I mean, I wouldn't expect people who are never forcibly confronted with scarcity and zero-sum competition, to be obsessed by scarcity and zero-sum competition).
That may be true, but I’d argue that’s just plain stupidity. Animals and toddlers exhibit similar behaviour - not understanding that collaboration and sharing can lead to overall better outcomes.
Due to lack of adversity, his theories have never been tested, only reinforced. He thinks he’s been flying the plane his whole life when really it’s been on autopilot.
Stupidity is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for believing in Trump's particular delusions. You can be stupid and not delude yourself into thinking that others must lose for you to win.
What this analysis is missing is Project 2025. The Heritage Foundation and a hundred other conservative thinktanks, as well as half of Congress are all in on a singular plan to transform America into a backwater shit hole. Trump might earnestly believe these things, but he is not the source of most of his ideas. They are spoonfed to him.
I agree that Project 2025 broadly sets the agenda, but when it comes to tariffs specifically, I'm under the impression that Trump is singularly obsessed with them and the conservative think tanks are, even if they're pro-tariff, uneasy with how far he's going with it.
Don’t forget Curtis Yarvin and his band of billionaire Silicon Valley VC adherents.
People are arguing about the economic rationale here and forgetting the philosophical.
They’ve broadcast a desire to send as much of the world to a new “dark age” as possible so they can sweep in and “save it”, reforming it as they desire. Vis a vis Prospero
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