Trump’s quest to cause as much harm to the US as humanly possible has continued after he threatened Europe and Apple with new tariffs.
Trumps global economic destruction tour appears to be proceeding, yet again. For a while, it almost felt like one of the top priorities of his administration was to completely bury the US economy and to make America broke again. This by relentlessly beating the US economy with nonstop tariffs and ensuring that the world economically decouples itself from the US insanity.
After all, we’ve seen the results of Trump’s nonstop tariffs. We bore witness to stock market crash after crash after crash after crash.
The stock market crashes were so frequent that we had to start naming them just to tell them apart. This includes the Trump “Liberation Day” stock market crash that lasted a whopping 4 days, the China tariff stock market crash, the Trump China stock market crash 2, and the Trump Easter stock market crash.
Of course, the Trump economic chaos and destruction isn’t exclusively tied to the stock markets. The destruction has led some to believe that the Trump recession in the us has already arrived. This with spillover effects including causing a potential recession in Canada, taking this country down along with it. To add insult to injury, price shocks from the insanity are already happening as goods being sold experience a surge in prices. This with more price shocks set to be coming soon for an increasingly large list of products.
One thing that has been notable, however, is how quiet things suddenly got. After around the half way point in April, things started calming down on the economic front. I mean, sure, there was the call to send US citizens to foreign gulags, the attacks on the scientific community, the arresting of judges, the punishing of news organizations for not being pro-Trump enough, the call for death penalties for Trump critics, the signing of a mass internet censorship law, and the politically motivated “investigation” into a media organization for the crime of journalism, but on the economic front, things have been somewhat quiet. It’s quite possible that the Trump administrations multiple crackdowns on free speech has distracted Trump from his task of blowing up the economy.
One thing that is particularly notable about this brief period of calm was the fact that the markets were gradually recovering. It was a slow and gradual process, but you could really get the sense that the stock markets were healing from all the destruction unleashed by the Trump administration. In fact, for me personally, my investments were actually reaching break even levels from he beginning of the year when Trump took over. I started wondering if I was actually going to see profit for the first time since Trump went into the White House. The numbers I saw brought a taste of actual hope.
Well, that hope was dashed recently. Trump has now turned back to lobbing more grenades at the US and global economy. This week, Trump was back at it trying to cause even more destruction on the global markets. First, he disrespected Europe and threatened to impose a 50% tariff on the continent. From the BBC:
The European Union’s trade chief said the 27-member bloc is committed to securing a trade deal with the US based on “respect” not “threats”.
It comes after US President Donald Trump threatened to slap a 50% tariff on all goods sent to the US from the EU.
“The EU’s fully engaged, committed to securing a deal that works for both,” EU Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic said after a call with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
“EU-US trade is unmatched & must be guided by mutual respect, not threats. We stand ready to defend our interests.”
As usual, the threat came with the usual corruption and insider trading on the part of the Trump administration. From ProPublica:
The week before President Donald Trump unveiled bruising new tariffs that sent the stock market plummeting, a key official in the agency that shapes his administration’s trade policy sold off as much as $30,000 of stock.
Two days before that so-called “Liberation Day” announcement on April 2, a State Department official sold as much as $50,000 in stock, then bought a similar investment as prices fell.
And just before Trump made another significant tariff announcement, a White House lawyer sold shares in nine companies, records show.
More than a dozen high-ranking executive branch officials and congressional aides have made well-timed trades since Trump took office in January, most of them selling stock before the market plunged amid fears that Trump’s tariffs would set off a global trade war, according to a ProPublica review of disclosures across the government.
So, this announcement comes with the typical crime, market manipulation, and corruption that has become basically synonymous with the Trump administration and his respective sycophants. Standard “only in it for himself” stuff, really.
Part of the announcement that drew a lot of people’s attention was the fact that Trump is also going after Apple specifically. From the BBC:
He also warned Apple that he would impose a 25% import tax “at least” on iPhones not manufactured in America, later widening the threat to any smartphone.
CNN further reported that Samsung and other phone makers could get hit with these tariffs as well:
President Donald Trump on Friday demanded Apple and other smartphone makers like Samsung make their phones in the United States or face a 25% tariff.
“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else,” Trump posted Friday morning on Truth Social. “If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S.”
Speaking to press in the Oval Office on Friday after signing executive orders, Trump said the tariff would apply to any phone maker selling devices in the US.
“It would be more. It would be also Samsung and anybody that makes that product,” Trump told reporters. “Otherwise it wouldn’t be fair.”
Now, obviously, there’s a lot of questions over whether or not Trump could target a specific company. Specifically, would slapping a tariff on one company be considered unconstitutional? Very likely. After all, there are very good reasons why you don’t hear of very many laws saying “[insert company here] shall be subject to the following laws…”. Targeting a specific company comes with a lot of constitutional hurdles and simply trying to financially harm one company (as would potentially be the case here) would easily be open for a court challenge. In fact, if such a tariff were to move ahead, it would be surprising if there isn’t a thought of moving forward with a legal challenge at least.
Still, it’s disappointing that the Trump administration has decided to carry on his barrage of economic attacks on the entire planet – attacks that will obviously cause significant harm to the US economy. Yet, here we are.
Some out there noted that the market dives at the end of the week weren’t as pronounced as you might think. Some of the speculation is that markets are waiting for more than a social media post and a threat. The thing is, Trump has carried out with his threats in the past. There’s the Liberation day tariffs and the steel and aluminum tariffs are two examples. Yes, the dairy and lumber tariffs didn’t exactly come to fruition, but others have. That is how we got some of those previous stock market crashes in the first place.
Still, if there is that thought out there, it suggests that more economic pain is heading our way should Trump follow through with even some of these latest threats. Some aren’t waiting around as seen by Fridays stock market slide. So, anything is possible at this point.
The other thing to keep in mind here is that threatening others is sort of like crack for Trump. Once he takes a hit of that crack, he feels inclined to take a few more hits of proverbial crack. This can easily come in the form of additional stupid tariffs on other things along the way. So, it’s entirely possible that this won’t even be the only threats Trump makes in the next few weeks. As a result, there could very easily be more economic pain coming for American on top of what we see in the news right now. Either way, it’s easy to get the feeling that it’s all downhill from here.
