Will Economic Pain Or Unbearable Personal Tragedy Finally Bring A Reckoning To Trump’s MAGA Base?

The Fire Next Time: How Pain Burns Through Illusion

Yesterday, the market jumped precipitously on opening, after a bad Tuesday. The volatility mirrors the volatility and chaos of Trump’s economic stewardship, especially in regard to his crackpot on-again-off-again trade wars. Reporting for the Wall Street Journal, Gavin Bade, Lingling Wei, John Dawsey and Alex Leary wrote that the regime is “considering slashing its steep tariffs on Chinese imports—in some cases by more than half—in a bid to de-escalate tensions with Beijing that have roiled global trade and investment... One administration official said Trump wouldn’t act unilaterally and would need to see some action from Beijing to lower tariffs. One senior White House official said the China tariffs were likely to come down to between roughly 50% and 65%. The administration is also considering a tiered approach similar to the one proposed by the House committee on China late last year: 35% levies for items the U.S. deems not a threat to national security, and at least 100% for items deemed as strategic to America’s interest, some of the people said. The bill proposed phasing in those levies over five years. ‘President Trump has been clear: China needs to make a deal with the United States of America. When decisions on tariffs are made, they will come directly from the president. Anything else is just pure speculation,’ White House spokesman Kush Desai said.”

The quartet of reporters saw that Trump realizes his policies have failed— dismally. On Tuesday he said that “he was willing to cut trariffs on Chinese goods and that the 145% tariffs he imposed on China during his second term would come down. ‘But it won’t be zero,’ he said… In China’s policymaking circles, Trump’s comments Tuesday were viewed as a sign of him folding, people who consult with Chinese officials said. Even if Trump decides to lower some tariffs on Chinese imports by half, that level would still mean the U.S. markets would be all but closed to many Chinese makers of electrical machinery and equipment and other products. Some analysts have estimated that trade between the two countries could dry up within months at such a high level.”

Although Trump has pretended, when asked, that he’s speaking with Xi, in reality the two leaders haven’t had a single conversation since Musk got Trump back into the White House. “A delegation of senior Chinese officials including Finance Minister Lan Fo’an and the governor of the People’s Bank of China, Pan Gongsheng, are in Washington this week for the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. So far, they haven’t scheduled any meetings with the administration and have scheduled to leave Washington Thursday.”

CNN indicated that Trump’s U-turn is tantamount to him blinking. “Trump’s shift in tone also went viral on the Chinese internet. On Wednesday, the hashtag ‘Trump chickened out’ was trending as a top topic on social media platform Weibo, racking up more than 150 million views.”

But it was Paul Krugman who put the shambles of Trump’s tariff agenda into some reasonable context, with a focus on Scott Bessent’s Tuesday closed door session with JP Morgan Chase fat cats on Tuesday. “[W]hat the hell,” he asked, “was the Treasury secretary doing giving a closed-door briefing on a significant policy change that hadn’t yet been officially announced? Isn’t that a setup for large-scale insider trading? Indeed, attendees at that conference surely made market bets before Bessent’s remarks became public. And since when are major policy announcements by government officials made off the record to closed private-sector meetings? One even wonders whether Bessent was announcing policy or making it: Did Trump back him up only after the fact? The content of his remarks aside, what was Bessent even doing at this event? Senior government officials aren’t supposed to be helping investment banks entertain their clients. Was Bessent paid for his appearance? That would have been inconceivable under any previous administration, but now God knows. Or are we now entering an era in which companies that do favors for Trump and co., either in the form of money or support for their policies, get lucrative ins… For the Treasury secretary to do so— especially when announcing a major policy change— is a huge ethical breach.”

[T]his is an extraordinary reversal— a capitulation equivalent to surrender. And bear in mind that the damage being done by Trump’s tariffs comes not just from how high they are but from the uncertainty they’re creating. That gigantic China tariff was announced just two weeks ago. Now Trump says, “we will be very nice and they’re going to be very nice.” How can any business make plans in this kind of environment?

Oh, and it seems likely that Trump will announce trade “deals,” possibly with China, probably with other countries, that aren’t actually deals— just “memorandums of understanding” that offer few specifics. He and Bessent will try to spin this as a policy triumph, but all that will really have happened is a confirmation that you can’t trust anything this administration says, including its threats.

As the same time Trump has made a humiliating climb-down on Jerome Powell.

While news media and some investors may still be credulous enough to believe Trump’s boasts, harder-headed players will look at his U-turns and conclude that he runs away when confronted. Why would China be "very nice” now that it knows that Trump can be rolled? On the contrary, China will be even less likely than before to make concessions. And other countries will be more willing to stand up to Trump and more likely to make deals with Beijing.

We are, in short, in a worse position than we were before Trump began his tariff bluster. Being a cowardly, loud-mouthed bully presiding over utter chaos is not an effective negotiating strategy.

No doubt Stephen Collinson agrees— even if CNN doesn’t allow that degree of candor. Instead, yesterday, he wrote about the MAGAts too stupid to understand what’s headed down the pike in their direction. This week I passed a car whose license plate was something like “I heart chaos,” I didn’t doubt who he voted for— only wondered why he wasn’t driving a Muskmobile. “By conventional measures,” wrote Collinson, “Trump’s second presidency is already descending into disarray amid a legal morass, self-inflicted errors, and a vast gap between its massive ambition and its capacity to enact that vision. Yet Trump’s tens of millions of supporters didn’t send a conventional president back to the White House– and don’t judge their hero’s performance by traditional yardsticks. On one hand, exhausting crises on multiple fronts point to a potentially failed administration. But as Trump attempts to destroy governing structures at home and abroad, chaos is itself a marker of success.”

The Trump recession may change some of their minds. “Or perhaps it would take a national security crisis precipitated by his volatile leadership and callow foreign policy team to destroy Trump’s presidency. Even then, Trump’s hold on his supporters is so strong, nothing might shake their confidence even if he alienates the middle-ground voters who helped reelect him… A sense of disorder is mounting… History will form its own judgments on the second term of Trump. But as the daily pandemonium unfolds, it’s worth remembering that this divisive presidency can look like a dangerous failure to half the country while manifesting as a stunning success to the other half. If America was ever united by a common version of reality, that’s no longer the case.”

But even the most low IQ/cultish movements can hit a wall when reality crashes through the front door. For Trump’s hardcore base, that moment may not come from another indictment or even a shocking international scandal. It might come when the economy, long their last illusion of stability, implodes under the weight of Trump’s erratic economic sabotage— when a recession hits not just Wall Street but their own paychecks, pensions, and grocery bills.

Or perhaps it’ll be more personal, more tragic. When a loved one dies not because of some deep state conspiracy, but because they listened to RFK Jr.'s anti-vax disinformation— amplified and winkingly endorsed by Trump— and skipped a routine vaccine. When their kid’s school closes not because of woke policies but because a measles outbreak swept through their community. When chaos isn’t just on Fox News but right there at their dinner table.

Faith can survive a lot— humiliation, hypocrisy, even the kind of abject failure Trump is leading the country into. But it isn’t as likely to survive sustained, tangible personal harm. When MAGA loyalists begin to realize that the pain in their lives isn't caused by George Soros, AOC, drag queens or even Hunter Biden’s laptop, but by the man they put all their faith in... that’s when the rupture begins. Not necessarily with a bang, but with a bill they can’t pay, a coffin they can’t close without breaking down, a future they can’t give their children.