Our View: Trump charts chaotic course in trade wars

Since taking office on Jan. 20 for his second term, President Donald Trump has steered the ship of state full speed on a seemingly chaotic course, mostly navigating an about-face from the Biden administration’s policies and only very occasionally zigzagging away from buffeting winds of public disapproval.

In support of making progress on the administration’s journey toward redefining the scope and structure of the federal government, as well as its policies and alliances, Trump’s first mate, world’s wealthiest man Elon Musk, is fond of quoting the Silicon Valley ethos “Move fast and break things.”

And that’s certainly happened along the way: See the firings by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) of Ebola prevention experts, federal workers fighting bird flu, and engineers and technicians in charge of maintaining America’s stockpile of 5,000 nuclear warheads, many of whom were reportedly rehired following news reports and calls from alarmed lawmakers.

The most recent example of the Trump administration’s shock-and-awe approach came in early March as the stock market fell into a tailspin and the dollar weakened while Trump doubled down on his trade war and refused to rule out the possibility of his policies causing the U.S. economy to go into recession this year.

When asked in a March 9 interview on Fox News about the possibility, Trump said, “I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America. That’s a big thing.”

The following day, Wall Street investors sold off stocks, bitcoin’s value fell, and the Dow and S&P 500 each had their worst days of the year. Between Feb. 19 and March 10, the S&P 500 lost $4 trillion in market value, walloping everyday Americans’ 401(k)s. Even Tesla was down 15.4%, in a hit to Musk’s own wallet. The next day, Trump placed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports worldwide, drawing retaliatory measures from Europe and likely giving migraines to some C-suite denizens as they hoped he’d reverse himself on this latest round of tariffs like he has with Canada and Mexico.

Trump is the hardly the first politician to say he wants to run the government like a business; to many, that’s seen as a plus. But while the models share similarities, government isn’t a business. It’s run on taxpayer dollars and most of its initiatives — ranging from the military to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to the postal service, Social Security and Medicare — aren’t profit-motivated ventures. They’re about delivering vital public services.

And the U.S. government is most definitely not a startup, no matter how much Musk and his DOGE bros treat it like one.

It’s folly to think that one can dismantle virtually overnight a nearly 250-year-old government and rewrite the hard-fought post-World War II military partnerships, trade relationships and foreign treaties that catapulted the United States into the world’s premier superpower without risking significant negative impacts for many of the nation’s 340 million citizens.

In service of this conservative policy blitz and its indeterminate end game, Trump has surrounded himself with yes-men and -women, prizing loyalty in Cabinet members and agency appointees over experience or even, in his critics’ view, competence. Similarly, Trump administration officials have been reported to have been questioning federal job applicants and currently employed civil servants about their alignment with MAGA values and how they voted in the presidential election.

Clearly, Trump’s White House is not seeking to emulate Lincoln’s team of rivals.

Sure, it’s good to have everyone in an organization rowing in the same direction. That’s your job as a leader. But you also don’t want people to be afraid to tell you if you’re about to plunge straight over a waterfall.