Trump's All-Purpose Go-To Tactics

He's not smart. He's not strategic. He's just repetitive and relentless. Now he's applying all the same old go-to tactics to his tariffs.

Donald Trump only possesses a handful of all-purpose tactics that he pulls out for any and all occasions. He’s not clever enough or self-assured enough to meet each situation with commensurate responses. He surrounds all of his interactions with copious amounts of bluster, but the bluster is just a masquerade for his deep internal fear.

His vocabulary of actions is even more limited than the vocabulary of his oratory.

His tariff policy (if you can even refer to the erratic mess he’s created as “policy”) gives us the perfect opportunity to witness his “moves” in action. In fact, they’ve all already been sitting right out there in plain sight.

You’ve seen them all before, in one form or another. Here’s the list, in roughly the same order in which they’ve been playing out in the context of the Trump tariffs:

Overpromise

For decades, Trump touted what he believes to be the benefits of tariffs to the United States. But on the campaign trail, instead of describing any specifics, he spoke in general terms. He promised he would “Make American Wealthy Again” from the podiums of just about every campaign stop.

But he dangled this carrot in front of his followers, convincing them that each of them is somehow going to be the nation’s next billionaire. To hear him say it, one would think it was merely a matter of time before we’d all be rich and the nation would be universally prosperous.

Finding a critical thinking skill in his campaign crowds was as unlikely as finding a four-leaf clover in Death Valley. No amount of hyperbole was too grand or excessive for them to reject.

Lie

The documented lies that Trump told in his first term were in the tens of thousands. Lying is what he does.

Trump continues to insist that his massive tariffs will “bring manufacturing back to the United States.” That’s one of many lies he’s told about tariffs, but this one in particular is a whopper.

For starters, new manufacturing plants don’t just spring up overnight like mushrooms in a damp forest; they take years or decades to plan and construct. So there’s a guaranteed gap between the time a tariff is imposed and the time a new plant could be operational.

Second, many of the goods to be created in his imaginary factories would cost exponentially more to manufacture in the U.S. than they do in China or the other countries where tariffs have been imposed.

Third, the U.S. is already having difficulty filling agricultural jobs and that situation is about to get worse with his administration’s continued deportation of undocumented immigrants. So just where does he think the workforce is going to come from?

Finally, the kinds of factories that are being put into service in the U.S. today don’t go into production using your grandfather’s era assembly lines. Many of them are automated almost beyond comprehension, with robotics handling the menial, repetitive tasks. The Chinese are already so far ahead of the U.S. in this regard that we’d be playing catch-up from day one.

Delay

Kicking the proverbial can down the road must have been the only childhood game that Trump engaged in. He has perfected that skill and trots it out at any applicable opportunity.

Remember the four years of non-existent “Infrastructure Week”? Do you recall how often his response to questions from the press about an unkept promise would be “In two weeks …” or “In the next month …” or the even more vague “In the near future”?

That habit has begun to reveal itself with his tariffs. He’s promised that we’d “start seeing the results very soon.” He’s claimed that there are “hundreds of deals in the works” with other countries, without providing a single bit of concrete evidence of even one deal.

In his first term, he could sort of rely on his ability to stir up some new crisis to distract the media when nothing happened “in two weeks” or “in the next little while.” But the tariffs and their effects on every single American are different. People are already taking it personally and he won’t be able to hide forever from his failure coupled with his inaction.

“You just have to ride it out.” In reality, the kind of patience Trump is prescribing means that we just have to suffer for a couple of generations.

Double-Down

Trump learned from his scumbag mentor, Roy Cohn, never to admit he’s wrong and never to back down. As immoral and antisocial as that tactic is, it has admittedly gotten Trump pretty far.

He’s already been using this tactic around the tariffs. There are threats of empty shelves in the nation’s big box stores. West Coast ports are already reporting significant drops in shipments. He’s also experiencing the worst poll numbers in 80 years for the first 100 days of a presidency, yet he shows no signs of changing his policy. His inability to admit he might be wrong continues to make things worse for him and for the nation.

Attack

When it comes to attacking Trump’s perceived enemies, nothing is off the table. Any kind of insult is fair game. Even his attack lines are repetitive. “Fake news!” “It’s a hoax!” “Witch hunt!” His accusations are so repetitive that his followers mindlessly repeat them on his behalf.

He’s gone after the media for their reporting on tariffs. He’s calls out reporters and publications by name. He has his most recent Spokesrobot, Karoline Leavitt, attack reporters in the White House Briefing Room. And it goes without saying that he attacks any Democrat who questions his tariffs.

Not surprisingly, though, several Republicans have also publicly spoken out against Trump’s tariffs but he pretty much leaves them alone because he knows that, without them, the rest of his agenda could easily get stalled.

Blame

In an interview close to the end of his first term, the reporter asked him if there were any mistakes he made during his time as President. “No,” he said, without a shred of shame. Trump always holds himself blameless and, as a method of convincing himself that he is blameless, he usually finds someone or something else to blame. He’s blamed Nancy Pelosi, he’s blamed Chuck Schumer, he’s blamed the “deep state,” he’s blamed the Democratic Party as a whole.

Since his second inauguration, the Gross Domestic Product is down in Q1 and the stock market is also down drastically, both due to the massive economic uncertainty that his tariffs has caused. “This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s,” he whines, while simultaneously taking credit for the most recent positive jobs report.

No amount of incontrovertible evidence will ever convince Trump that he’s ever at fault for anything.

Somehow, it got implanted decades ago in Trump’s sad little mind that tariffs would be the miraculous solution to all of America’s ills. (Perhaps it was discussed that one day that he bothered to show up for class at Wharton.) He’s been perseverating about tariffs ever since. Now he’s more committed than ever to that long held but simplistic and erroneous belief, and he’s willing to destroy the nation’s and the world’s economy to defend that belief.