When he started with a limited set of tariffs on Canada/Mexico/China it sort of made sense as a bullying move. The administration at least had the bandwidth to conduct three sets of negotiations.

But it’s essentially impossible to negotiate 180 deals simultaneously. No way does Tunisia get even five minutes to pitch a deal - the simultaneous imposition of tariffs effectively DDOS’d the negotiation team.

I'd love to hear more about what sort of sense these tariffs made at any stage since they were announced.

I’m not advocating for or defending them, but he bullied some immigration related concessions out of Mexico back in February in the first round of this stuff. You could plausibly call it a negotiation tactic. The latest is just pure madness any way you look at it.

The sense is that it's just another day in the life of a cult of action for action's sake.

Also for many countries it can’t be remedied because the tariffs are based on trade imbalances (not reciprocal, that is a lie). What does the US make that Cambodia needs/wants? There’s no way for them to close the gap on trade other than to stop selling to the US.

When the bully gets too ambitious the large number of bullied gang together for revenge, or at least effective countermeasures. The world will route around USA, find they can manage ok without it. The USA will be iced out, lose its reserve currency status, nobody will buy its military technology, making the USA unable to recoup large outlays for ambitious military projects, and the USA will lose its military dominance.

Also, the future of warfare and terrorism is autonomous networks of drones. Mexico and Canada won't be disposed to care what passes through their borders with the USA, and like Zelensky said ... we had the oceans and friendly neighbors, but that won't help us anymore.

EDIT: minor corrections

The USA may get the metric system out of this. The only reason the USA can hang on to its ridiculous "imperial" units has been its economically dominant position.

Imperial units are British, and the United States doesn’t use the imperial system.

Totally agreed! But bulling 95% of the class room... That doesn't work. New alliances would emerge, like Canada and the EU. No more new pipelines for the US but more upgrades to Canadian ports to ship oil to the EU. New economic routes will be created, new partner deals, etc... Without the US.

Trump just locked the US, kinda did the finger to the earth, and hopes people will come begging for trade.

>Bullying people in inferior bargaining positions has somehow worked thus far.

Has it? To who?

Canada hasn't, and won't, negotiate a single thing. We increased border patrols for a made up problem and thus far it has entirely served to catch guns and drugs and illegals coming from the United States.

The United States has lost tens to hundreds of billions of sales to Canada. They are never, ever coming back.

Trump sabotaged a critical trading relationship in a way that Americans just cannot comprehend, through his laughably stupid "bullying".

Similarly, supposedly Vietnam has come "hat in hand". Vietnam has literally nothing to offer. It has negligible tariffs or blocks on US trade, it just happens to be a poor country. The bullying is utter stupidity.

Mexico thus far has taken being pissed in the face because they're 100% of Trump's purported problem -- from drugs, to migrants to cartels to funnelling Chinese goods, and the likelihood is that Mexico ends up being the biggest beneficiary.

Wasn't appointing a fentanyl czar and agreeing to spend more on border enforcement a form of concession? https://x.com/JustinTrudeau/status/1886529228193022429 This doesn't seem like Canada isn't negotiating a single thing. What am I not understanding here?

I mean over the course of his career.

And yet even after stiffing the contractors, the casinos still went bankrupt.

It’s a culture thing.