Donald Trump has spent decades presenting himself as a financial genius. His strongest evidence remains that he managed to bankrupt a casino, a business designed so that the customers are statistically guaranteed to lose.
Now that same grasp of economics has been entrusted with the world’s largest economy, global trade and a war in the Middle East – like appointing the captain of the Titanic because he once claimed expertise in ice. Last night, Trump imposed fresh tariffs of between 10 per cent and 12.5 per cent on more than 80 countries, including Britain, Canada, Mexico, Australia, India and the European Union.
Once again, America’s allies have been spoken to like contestants on The Apprentice, humiliated and punished on a presidential whim. Except this is no television show. The consequences will be measured in higher prices, lost jobs, damaged pensions and greater instability across the world.
Trump talks about tariffs as though they are cheques posted to Washington by grateful foreign governments. In reality, they are paid by importers and passed on to families through more expensive goods.
This has been explained to him repeatedly. He either cannot understand it or believes his supporters will never question him. Both possibilities are alarming. After his previous tariffs were ruled unlawful, Trump needed another legal excuse. His administration has now settled on forced labour, claiming dozens of countries were failing to stop goods made through exploitation entering their supply chains.
Yet many of those being punished already ban such imports and have stronger employment protections than America. Trump has discovered workers’ rights with the sincerity of a burglar discovering home security. Forced labour is a grave abuse. Using it as a disguise for another tariff war cheapens the issue and exposes the cynicism beneath his incompetence.
The same ignorance and arrogance are driving Trump’s needless war with Iran.
In both cases, he mistakes aggression for strength, improvisation for strategy and confidence for knowledge. He launches first, boasts second and leaves everyone else to contain the consequences. Trump has no convincing endgame in Iran, no clear definition of victory and no credible path out. The conflict has already cost around £28 billion, with tens of billions more being demanded. Oil has risen beyond $100 a barrel. Petrol has become more expensive. Transport, manufacturing and food costs are being pushed higher.
Trump has created a military crisis, an energy crisis and a trade crisis at the same time, then congratulated himself on the result. It is like setting fire to the curtains and demanding praise for discovering central heating.
This week, he had the audacity to say people were “very impressed”. Americans, let alone the rest of the world, are not. History offers few examples of one man creating so much instability while remaining certain that he is the cleverest person in every room. Markets this morning have tumbled as investors try to measure the combined damage of war, oil prices and tariffs. Yet the real victims are not hedge-fund billionaires with teams of advisers.
They are workers with modest workplace pensions, pensioners relying on small private funds and families who have saved carefully for years.
They followed the advice they were given. They put aside what they could and hoped it might provide some security in retirement. Then Trump dreams up another economic policy between a Big Mac and a round of golf, and another piece of that security disappears. He will not suffer alongside them.
While ordinary people watch their savings fall and household bills rise, the Trump family has used the presidency to build extraordinary wealth through cryptocurrency, licensing deals and businesses tied to political power.
His supporters were promised a man so rich he could never be bought. They received one determined to sell every available surface, including the office itself. The arrangement is brutally simple. Trump creates the uncertainty, working families absorb the losses, and his relatives find another opportunity to profit.
His economic worldview has all the sophistication of a child dividing sweets. If another country prospers, America must have been cheated. If a business imports goods, it deserves punishment. If prices rise, someone abroad must be blamed.
There is no room for supply chains, investment, alliances or consequences. There is only Trump standing amid the wreckage, pointing at the rubble and insisting it proves he is winning. Even his most devoted supporters are beginning to notice. Many MAGA voters blame the Iran war for higher petrol prices, while Republicans facing the midterm elections fear they will pay the electoral price.
Trump appears unconcerned. He cannot seek another term, and loyalty in his world has always travelled in one direction.
America has survived foolish presidents, reckless presidents and dishonest presidents. Trump combines all three with an almost artistic lack of self-awareness. He is financially illiterate yet obsessed with money, intellectually incurious yet certain of his brilliance, and becoming personally richer while millions suffer from his decisions.
His greatest talent has always been converting private failure into public cost. Trump promised to run America like one of his businesses. He has kept that promise. The debts belong to somebody else, the damage is left behind, and he walks away, insisting nobody in history has ever enjoyed greater success.
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