Trump’s insane vision of grandeur:
“I am this giant store. It's a giant, beautiful store, and everybody wants to go shopping there. And on behalf of the American people, I own the store, and I set prices, and I'll say, if you want to shop here, this is what you have to pay.”
“During his first term, Trump never shut up about the stock market. Now, the economy is teetering thanks to self-inflected wounds, and Trump can only blame Biden for a mess that’s entirely his own doing. When Time pressed him about economic conditions, he offered a response that registered zero brainwave activity:
The prices of groceries have gone down. The only price that hasn't gone down is the price of energy. The cost of energy, I'm sorry, well, energy has gone down, excuse me. Let me change that—is the interest rates. And interest rates have essentially stayed the same. But almost every other thing, I mean, you take a look at what's going on, and this is, we're taking in billions of dollars of tariffs, by the way. And just to go back to the past, I took in hundreds of billions of dollars of tariffs from China, and then when COVID came, I couldn't institute the full program, but I took in hundreds of billions, and we had no inflation.
Trump seems to be in total denial of the effects from his catastrophic trade war, and his usual huckster bravado now reads like unhinged magical thinking.
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Time pointed out that Trump has made zero deals since his trade adviser Peter Navarro promised “90 deals in 90 days.” Trump simply denied this reality.
No, there’s many deals.
When are they going to be announced?
You have to understand, I'm dealing with all the companies, very friendly countries. We're meeting with China. We're doing fine with everybody. But ultimately, I've made all the deals.
Not one has been announced yet. When are you going to announce them?
I’ve made 200 deals.
You’ve made 200 deals?
100%.
Then Trump imagined himself a “a giant department store,” the way a small child might imagine they’re a dragon.
I am this giant store. It's a giant, beautiful store, and everybody wants to go shopping there. And on behalf of the American people, I own the store, and I set prices, and I'll say, if you want to shop here, this is what you have to pay.
The GOP once prized itself as the party of free market capitalism. Now its leader declares himself the owner and operator of The America Store, where he sets the prices.
Trump’s delusions of grandeur don’t end there. He told both Time and The Atlantic that he wasn’t kidding about serving a third term, which is unconstitutional. Time asked Trump, “You recently said you were ‘not joking’ about seeking a third term and that there were methods to do it. What methods?” His response was alarming.
I'd rather not discuss that now, but as you know, there are some loopholes that have been discussed that are well known. But I don't believe in loopholes. I don't believe in using loopholes.
MORE AT:
It really should be a bigger story.
MAY 02, 2025
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“But scratch the surface of this bluster and it quickly becomes clear that Trump’s ideas about tariffs and their alleged benefits are a combination of confused and baseless. For instance, when he was asked last month if he’s considered directing federal agencies to study how tariffs will actually impact prices, Trump indicated it hadn’t crossed his mind.
In lieu of data, why does Trump think tariffs are so great? Because he seems to have deluded himself into believing that William McKinley, president from 1897 until his assassination in 1901, presided over a golden age of America thanks to his extreme and short-sighted protectionism.
“We were the richest relatively — think of this — from 1870 to 1913. That was our richest,” Trump claimed during a speech last month. “Because we collected tariffs ... we had so much wealth. Of course, now we give it away to transgender ... everybody gets a transgender operation."
Trump has even gone as far as to suggest that McKinley was a martyr for the cause of tariffs.
With Trump’s tariffs promising to be a big topic of conversation ahead of next week’s “Liberation Day,” we connected with Eric Rauchway, a UC Davis distinguished history professor and an expert on early 20th century America, to better understand what exactly Trump is getting wrong.
“The McKinley tariff was one of a series of laws passed in Congress in the 1890s that actually precipitated a severe economic downturn. If we had better data on it, we’d probably think of it like the Great Depression,” Rauchway told us. “There are millions of people unemployed. This is an era where you have armies of the unemployed protesting. It’s what helped give rise to the progressive movement.”
Rauchway went on to point out that ultimately, Trump’s ideas about the economy are incoherent.
“He wants the society of the 1950s with the policies of the 1890s. But you literally don’t get the society of the 1950s without a comprehensive rejection of the policies of the 1890s, even by Republicans,”
MORE AT:
Trump's hopeless tariffs confusion, explained by a historian
"The president seems to believe he can impose prohibitively high tariffs *and* collect revenue, which you can’t do."
MAR 27, 2025
The New York Times
Companies Are Serving Notice: We’re Raising Prices Because of Tariffs
President Trump’s trade policies are already starting to frustrate American consumers who have noticed higher prices in their shopping carts.
Reporting from Washington
May 2, 2025, 5:03 a.m. ET
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