Let’s join the chorus and take a look at President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office (I’m confident that you’ve been able to maintain a steady pulse despite my delay 😉 ).

Let’s start with foreign policy.

Since Mr. Trump returned to office, pundits have repeatedly intoned that Mr. Trump’s grotesquely destructive behavior on so many fronts is diminishing our allies’ confidence in America.  I beg to differ with these optimists:  Mr. Trump’s actions over his first one hundred days in office have destroyed our allies’ confidence in America.  I do not believe that America now holds nor for the rest of my Medicare-aged lifetime will hold the esteem of free peoples or the standing on the world stage that it has held for over a century.  While any student of foreign affairs is well aware that America has always – as it should – looked out for itself, there is likewise no question that this country has done more good for more people than any other nation in history.  Now, we’re just another country.  Mr. Trump made clear during the 2024 campaign what he intended to do if reelected (which our allies correctly understood to mean that he intended to turn his back on them).  (There will be no mention of Ukraine here, which I defer to a separate future note.)  For the remainder of my lifetime, our allies will set their own course.  (One need look no further for confirmation than the recent Canadian and Australian national election results, clear repudiations of Mr. Trump.)  I concede that if we ever regain our democratic footing, there may be advantages to this shift that a shrewd president might be able to exploit, but we will still be maneuvering in a literally new world.

One can make a credible argument that it is not Mr. Trump, but the majority of American voters who have turned their back on the world; after all, they elected him.  That said, I am reminded of an observation made to me by a colleague years ago:  “You value what you know.”  Citizens of the European democracies have lived with the threat of brutal aggression from the east – Germany, then the USSR, now Russia – for over a century.  The threat is engrained in the psyches of Western Europeans.  No matter how bad economic times get, a Western European knows that there are greater terrors.  Americans have never experienced brutal political subjugation, or felt it close at hand; the Western European’s visceral political fears are not part of our DNA.  These Americans naturally focus on the challenges that are real to them.  Those who feel that they have been deprived of their share of the American Dream are more interested in disrupting a system that they believe – in some cases, correctly; in other cases, perhaps not — hasn’t given them sufficient opportunity.  They seemingly don’t have much conception of what the overall consequences of that disruption might be, or that tyranny could be the result here or elsewhere; those fears don’t compute.  (Sadly, I suspect that such is now computing for some Latino Trump voters.)  While these Americans’ focus may be understandable, it is just as understandable that their priorities might be considered shallow by Western Europeans who recognize that Mr. Trump’s obvious autocratic sympathies literally endanger their freedom.

On to the home front.

Despite Mr. Trump’s and his MAGA zealots’ repeated claims that Mr. Trump received a “mandate” in the last election, I am confident that they recognize that only half the country supports him on his best day, and that given the American cultural dynamic, they are employing the Nazi model of the 1930s to quickly consolidate their control to reshape America to their vision – an American Apartheid – rather than follow the approach of gradually undermining democracy more recently adopted by Vladimir Putin in Russia, Recep Erdoğan in Turkey and Viktor Orbán in Hungary.  They have accordingly fashioned an Administration consisting almost entirely of previously-identified true believers.  They have moved aggressively to silence, intimidate and quell voices that oppose them and institutions that facilitate critical thought (e.g., the Smithsonian); they understand that the more Americans hear only MAGA propaganda, the greater the percentage of Americans who will come to believe it. 

Akin to my frustration with foreign policy commentators who imply that America has not already lost its unique standing in the world is my exasperation with legal commentators who are debating whether, given the Trump Administration’s actions, we are merely approaching a Constitutional crisis, or we have reached it.  Really?  We have passed it.  We need look no further than Kilmar Abrego Garcia.  It doesn’t matter whether he’s a choir boy.  An existing court order forbid his deportation to El Salvador; he was nonetheless deported to El Salvador by the Trump Administration; the United States Supreme Court has ordered the Trump Administration to “facilitate” his return; Mr. Trump has refused to do so.  It has always been blatantly obvious – even before Mr. Trump recently acknowledged it in an interview – that El Salvador would return Mr. Abrego Garcia if Mr. Trump asked.  Mr. Trump doesn’t care.  Mr. Abrego Garcia still sits in El Salvador.  The President clearly abides by no higher principle — and there is certainly no physical force — to make him do what he doesn’t want to do, or to prevent him from doing what he wants to do.  Look up the definition of the word, “dictatorship,” and compare it to the behavior we’ve seen in the last 100 days.  Ask yourself whether the fact that the Trump Administration hasn’t yet wielded its power against some of its perceived adversaries doesn’t mean it won’t, or doesn’t feel it can.

Let’s move on to tariffs, from a different perspective than expressed in a recent post.  TLOML spent most of her career in rehabilitation services, which often serve the needs of relatively-older individuals.  Years ago, she made an observation certainly proving true in my case:  that it is a myth that one’s less desirable characteristics soften as one ages; that in fact, as one ages, it becomes more difficult to temper one’s regrettable tendencies.  In her introduction to Fascism:  A Warning, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright noted, “[Mr. Trump] conceives of the world as a battlefield in which every country is intent on dominating every other; where nations compete like real estate developers to ruin rivals and squeeze every penny of profit out of deals.  Given his life experience, one can see how Trump might think that way ….”  Although I am reluctant to tread on the territory of two learned psychologists who read these notes, I will nonetheless venture that I think Mr. Trump is regressing to his core.  He will turn 79 this year.  He has believed in tariffs for the last 40 years, has focused on them throughout his public career, and has ignored all sound economic advice regarding their overall efficacy.  His recent comment about American children having to make do with “two dolls instead of thirty dolls” and that “maybe” the two dolls “will cost a couple bucks more than they would normally …” demonstrated an uncharacteristic political obliviousness; one of his political strengths has been a savviness about “ordinary” Americans’ sentiments.  As he redecorates the Oval Office in gold, he seems blithefully unconcerned that the voter segment that put him over the top in 2024 due to inflationary fears will desert him if tariffs either increase inflation or cause a recession.  It is obviously hard to judge the mental degradation of a figure who has acted so outrageously throughout his political career, but one can credibly wonder whether the President of the Unites States himself isn’t … losing it — a scary thought with over 1,300 days left in his term.  (For those that might feel glee at the possibility of Mr. Trump’s divestiture due to infirmity, I would caution:  Watch out what you wish for.  I actually consider the notion of Vice President J.D. Vance succeeding Mr. Trump an even more alarming prospect than Mr. Trump himself, with a rationale best expressed if at all in a separate post.)   

So what’s the 100 Day Scorecard?  That in such a short period of time, the amount of destruction that Mr. Trump has wreaked on the American way of life and the level of additional enmity he has reaped are both truly remarkable.  I would wager that if the presidential election was rerun tomorrow, Mr. Trump would lose the popular vote (if not the Electoral College) to former Vice President Kamala Harris.

Obviously, the election won’t be rerun tomorrow.  So what happens during the next 200 days, the period that will end about a year before the 2026 midterm elections? 

If Mr. Trump’s tariffs do indeed cause product shortages, increase inflation, and/or cause a recession, or the DOGE-driven federal layoffs adversely affect service levels for programs Americans rely upon (Elon Musk has proven to be as inept as he is dastardly), or the Republicans cut Medicaid or Veterans benefits (received by many Trump voters), there will be a ferocious response.  The resistance of those who have heretofore opposed MAGA aims will coalesce with the outrage of the pivotal segment of Trump voters who will feel betrayed.  Although Mr. Trump is already trying to blame any future economic woes on former President Joe Biden, polls indicate that all but the most gullible MAGAs will hold Mr. Trump responsible.  Anti-Administration rallies and demonstrations – already begun in at least our part of the country – will grow and intensify.  It seems likely that the next 200 days will heavily influence the 2026 midterms and it also seems probable,  given Republicans’ extremely thin margin in the House of Representatives and historical precedent, that Democrats will take control of the House if there are free and fair elections in 2026.  In normal times, this would largely strangle the last two years of the second Trump term. 

These aren’t normal times.  I’ve previously mentioned here a maxim I employed during my career:  when setting strategy, assume that the other side is at least as bright as you are, and knows at least as much as you do about the matters at hand.  If one applies that approach to this context, it seems reasonable to assume that Mr. Trump and his MAGAs understand that their ability to maintain an American Apartheid will depend upon their willingness to manipulate and exceed the boundaries of American law.  (This past weekend, the President indicated that he didn’t know if he had to enforce the Constitution.  Someone should tell him – not that he would care — that he has taken an oath to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.”)  Although the Trump Administration currently appears to be primarily identifying those it considers undesirable by ethnicity and immigration status, at bottom Mr. Trump and MAGAs consider all who oppose them, regardless of ethnicity, sexual preference, religious persuasion, or citizenship status, to be undesirables.  One can anticipate that Republicans will seek to pass laws and Mr. Trump will issue Executive Orders which limit the participation of likely Democratic voters.  One can anticipate that ICE will make clear that it will be standing near polling places with heavy Latino populations, purportedly to ensure that no “illegals” vote, but in fact to intimidate American Latino citizens from voting, so as to avoid being “accidentally” swept up in an ICE raid.  One can anticipate that if anti-Administration rallies and demonstrations become sufficiently vocal and widespread – even if peaceful — the Administration will invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy armed federal troops against demonstrators.  One can anticipate that if the Trump Administration believes that Republicans are going to experience significant reversals in the midterms, Mr. Trump will at least consider declaring Martial Law and suspending elections, although no such presidential power is set forth in the Constitution.

So what do we do?  Since Mr. Trump took office I have at times reflected about my father, a decorated WWII Marine veteran of Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal who enlisted immediately after Pearl Harbor, willing to give his life to defend his country.  Aside from paying taxes – to which I’ve always considered it churlish to object, given the opportunities this nation provides — I’ve had to do virtually nothing to avail myself of the blessings of American citizenship.  I’ve recently been devoting significantly more time to meetings, rallies and demonstrations expressing opposition to what the Trump Administration is doing to our country.  (Since I don’t speak Spanish, I can’t exactly interpret about half of the chants at some rallies; but as I listen, I’m acutely aware – even if many Trump supporters appear to have forgotten – that at past points in our history, similar cries for freedom and peaceful opportunities were undoubtedly expressed in German, Italian, Polish, and a myriad of other languages; if alive then, as an Irish Papist I wouldn’t have known their words, but I would have understood them, too.)  I’m not sure whether these activities have any impact other than to show others participating that they’re not alone, but showing up has been something I can do.   

What you wish or are able to do — if anything — is up to you; everyone’s life circumstances are unique.  But if you’re feeling safe because you don’t fit the current profile of those being targeted by MAGAs, get over it, my friend.  If you’ve read this far, you’re probably not Mr. Trump’s biggest fan.  In this digital age, he knows it. If tomorrow the Trump Administration changes focus, authorities under the President’s command decide to pick you and me up, and they ultimately plunk us down in Alcatraz (which Mr. Trump wants to reopen as a prison 😉 ), who’s going to stop them?

We’ll see what happens.

One of the benefits of these pages is that it keeps us in closer contact with the friends that read the notes than might otherwise be the case.  Since a significant period of time has lapsed since the last post, some of these friends have recently very thoughtfully reached out to inquire whether we’re doing okay.  Except for being a little bit poorer than we were at the start of the year due to the financial markets’ gyrations – a condition that we share with a large swath of Americans 😉 — we’re doing fine.  The span between posts is attributable to both our need to attend to certain family matters and to the fact that having delivered several numbingly-long posts after the election, first describing what would happen when President Donald Trump returned to the White House and then decrying what has, completely predictably, transpired since he reassumed the presidency, I have seen little purpose to either boring you or further agitating you by telling you what you already know.

That said, although a post on the ways Mr. Trump is effecting his assault on our democratic republic and individual American liberties is in the offing, this note of impressions addresses perhaps the most benign of the manners (because they don’t, per se, affect our democratic processes or individual rights) in which Mr. Trump has wreaked havoc upon us since assuming the presidency:  the President’s tariff policies.  I have noted several times in these pages that Mr. Trump wants to take America back to the 1950s; a comment I heard from a pundit at some point in the last couple of months made me realize I’ve been wrong:  Mr. Trump actually wishes to take us back to the 1920s.  It is difficult to capture all of the ways in which the Trump tariff policies – to the extent they can be discerned – are ill-conceived; but here’s a try.

The Erraticism.  Businesspeople are like major league hitters:  they can adjust to a tight or wide strike zone (regulatory scheme); but they need the umpire to maintain a consistent strike zone.  Mr. Trump’s erratic policies – one day on, one day off; uncertain delays; willy-nilly exceptions; playing favorites; capricious, completely in his head – are exhausting.  They are causing American businesses across the board to reduce their projections for this year.  Mr. Trump may find that the recession he is inducing follows the well-known maxim about wars:  easy to start, hard to stop.  (An aside:  some financial pundits have expressed sympathy for U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s obvious discomfort at trying to rationalize Mr. Trump’s irrational tariff spasms.  Mr. Bessent was respected as a professionally competent, steady figure by U.S. markets when he assumed his post.  I have no sympathy for Mr. Bessent.  Any professionally competent, steady figure who watched Mr. Trump’s disregard of the advice of the professionally competent, steady figures who joined his first Administration, and nonetheless agreed to become part of the second Trump Administration, is a damn fool.)  

Faux Revenue Enhancement.  The Administration’s claims that tariffs will increase government revenues without appreciable inflation are being debunked by about every reputable economist I have heard comment.  Whatever the government receives in tariff revenues will be offset by a slowing economy that results in lower individual and business income tax revenues.  I don’t think any 2024 Trump voters angered by inflation who lose their jobs because their employers had to cut costs or their employers’ customers bought less of a higher-priced product will consider it a good trade even if a recession cools inflation – a cooling which those of us with longer memories are aware is by no means a certainty (see, “1970s stagflation”).

Preventing Illegal Drug Importation.  Let’s put Canada aside – the BBC recently reported that U.S. Customs and Border Patrol data indicates that only about 0.2% of all seizures of fentanyl entering the U.S. are made at the Canadian border (there may be more fentanyl entering Canada from the U.S. than the other way around) — and focus on illegal importation of illegal drugs through our southern border.  While the stated objective is obviously vital and one to which America should devote its law enforcement resources, the cartels in the countries in which illegal drug manufacture and export are major industries can bring more pressure to bear on their governments than Mr. Trump can hope to apply through tariffs.  This Administration rationale is a makeweight.   

Reshoring American Manufacturing.  Again, while the stated goal sounds good – and is good, in certain strategic areas such as advanced chip production and medical and pharmaceutical manufacturing – anybody with an IQ of 2 should recognize that America cannot meaningfully reverse four decades of manufacturing offshoring in months, or even in a few years.  I would submit that those Americans who voted for Mr. Trump with visions of the golden pot of jobs at the end of the rainbow cannot help but be sorely disappointed.  Any meaningful transition of manufacturing back to America – assuming such ever occurs – will take longer than the working lives of many Trump voters; the workers ultimately needed to operate any such reestablished factories will require sophisticated training from an educational system that the Trump Administration is currently gutting; the returning factories might well be placed near educational and urban centers, where relatively fewer Trump voters reside; what such reshoring will provide Trump voters who have been ravaged by inflation are relatively higher-priced goods created by workers paid more than their international counterparts; and – the cruelest irony of all for those envisioning the pot of gold — these new factories are likely to be so automated that they will provide few employment opportunities for the relatively small segment of 2024 Trump voters who will still be young and educable enough to benefit from any concerted, decades-long reshoring effort.

The President’s Gross Misreading of the Political Leaders He Confronts.  I made this comment about Mr. Trump during his first term, and it obviously remains true today:  he thinks like a businessman, not a political leader.  Businesspeople think in terms of money – what is the best achievable financial deal.  If one contracting commercial party has greater leverage than the other, the weaker party will bend to make the best economic arrangement it can.  Political leaders think in terms of power and image.  (One cannot maintain power without projecting a certain image – what the Asians refer to as, “face.”)  The difference in perspective is crucial.  Mr. Trump believes that because he (America) is big and other countries are littler, he can dictate to these smaller nations in the way he shorted the tradespeople who worked on his New York buildings in the last century.  I don’t think he can.  Political leaders don’t think that way.  Take any number of the most formidable international leaders of the modern era – both American Roosevelts, Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Putin, Mao Zedong, Xi Jinping; I would venture that required to make a stark choice between retaining their power and living in a cave, or ceding their power and living the remainder of their days in a luxurious palace, all would opt to retain the power and live in the cave.  Mr. Trump would choose the palace.  I don’t care how small one’s country is; one doesn’t become the leader of a nation – there are only 195 of them, out of a world population of over 8 billion people — without a significant amount of pride and chutzpah.  I would suggest that Mr. Trump has been so blatantly offensive in his approach that any political leader can take a stand against America’s tariffs and will be able to credibly claim to his/her people for at least a year that any hardship they’re suffering is America’s fault.

Of course, Mr. Xi is a special case.  One doesn’t become and remain the leader of the People’s Republic of China, the visceral heir to Chairman Mao and the most powerful autocrat in the world, by being a namby-pamby.  He is not going to buckle because Mr. Trump says boo; he can’t afford to look weak, lest he encourage ambitions in the minds of some of his less-supportive Politburo members.  Some have suggested that since America is the larger economy, it holds the upper hand in any trade war with China.  I’m not so sure.  I have seen reported that China’s top 2023 imports from the U.S. were oilseeds, grains, oil and gas — vital to the (relatively pro-Trump) energy and farming sectors of our economy, but available from other nations like Brazil and Russia.  As all who care are aware, China has recently responded to Mr. Trump’s tariffs by restricting its exports of rare earth minerals, which are integral in the manufacture of a raft of items from military equipment to semiconductor chips to smartphones, and cannot be acquired elsewhere.  Certainly, America has cards to play; at the same time, our relative economic size may not be that big an advantage when dealing with an autocratic government which can be less concerned about its people’s sentiment and can quell any unrest not only by force but by being able to justifiably blame America for the economic disruption that has caused their discomfort.

Political Ramifications.  If you believe – I don’t, but such is a point best elaborated upon in a subsequent post alluded to above – that the Trump Administration intends to allow free and fair elections in 2026 and 2028, Mr. Trump’s tariff policies are an egregiously stupid political blunder, as they are seemingly likely to cause a recession that will cost jobs, fuel inflation – arguably the issue that provided him his 1.5% margin over Vice President Kamala Harris last November – and invite devastating retaliation by our allies and enemies alike against American economic sectors heretofore very supportive of him.  I would submit that the Administration’s message, essentially, “Americans must absorb some short-term pain for long term gain,” won’t sell in an environment in which the American economy was humming when Mr. Trump took office, and there is no evident outside threat – such as Pearl Harbor, 9/11 or COVID – for which Americans have been traditionally willing to sacrifice.  Although Mr. Trump occasionally refers to Abraham Lincoln, he obviously has no idea what Mr. Lincoln actually said during his lifetime; if he did, he might do well to recall Mr. Lincoln’s remarks to the Washington Temperance Society of Springfield, Illinois, on February 22, 1842:

“Few can be induced to labor exclusively for posterity; and none will do it enthusiastically.  Posterity has done nothing for us; and theorise [sic] on it as we may, practically we shall do very little for it, unless we are made to think, we are, at the same time, doing something for ourselves.  What an ignorance of human nature does it exhibit, to ask or expect a whole community to rise up and labor for the temporal happiness of others after themselves shall be consigned to the dust ….  Pleasures to be enjoyed, or pains to be endured, after we shall be dead and gone, are but little regarded, even in our own cases, much less in the cases of others. [Emphasis Mr. Lincoln’s].”

Losing the Forest for the Trees.  What I consider the most damning indictment of Mr. Trump’s tariff policies saved for last.  I have heard a number of competent experts opine that Mr. Trump is correct when he claims that other nations haven’t always been “fair” to us in their trade practices.  Through his tariff initiatives, Mr. Trump is seemingly seeking to “right” these perceived “wrongs.”  I would argue that at this point in history, his approach, on the whole, is absurd.  We have been the winners.  I completely agree that China, which has taken advantage of us for decades through trade and currency manipulation and stealing our intellectual property, is a geopolitical and economic rival that must be dealt with differently and more aggressively, particularly in areas affecting our national security.  I also agree that American Administrations in the last quarter of the last century should have been more cognizant of how manufacturing offshoring and our trade arrangements were going to adversely affect the American factory worker, and implemented tax incentives and development programs to counteract those effects.  That said, as of the day Mr. Trump reassumed the presidency, America had the largest and best economy in the world, the envy of every other nation.  Assuming that other countries have indeed technically taken trade advantage of us over the years, it was obviously of no account; it has been America that has grown ever economically stronger.  Here, I admit to being influenced by my own experience.  I recall the practices of the insurance company that I, and several of those who read these notes, served for decades; for most of our time there, our organization – contrary to the cliché – maintained a very generous claims approach toward the niche market it served.  When one joined the Company, one was puzzled why the Company frequently paid claims that it arguably could have legally denied or limited under regulator-approved policy language.  Then, as the years passed, one came to recognize – as the Company consistently grew – that its success was because its market rewarded it with loyalty, embraced new service offerings, and provided it a stream of ever-increasing revenue.  Other providers serving the same niche customers in other capacities that hewed to the terms of their agreements — limiting their obligations where they legally could — ultimately lost customer share and departed the marketplace.  We got bigger.  We got stronger.

Mr. Trump, consumed with petty vindictiveness, simply doesn’t get how America prospered, how it achieved the strength he seeks to exploit by focusing on the forest rather than the trees.  Such is beyond his compass.  Perhaps at some point, if faced with a slowing economy, he will suddenly make some transparently face-saving declaration that will be gobbled up by his willingly-gullible supporters, and – perhaps save tariffs on China – return to essentially where we were on his “Liberation Day.”  If such occurs, all that will have been achieved through his aberrant machinations – assuming a recession is avoided — is to have alienated an entire world.  We are where we are, and we will be where we will be.     

You’ve long since decided that you didn’t mind that period with less Noise 😉 .  Stay well.