It's Shitty Anniversary time

A year ago, Donald Trump stood in the Rose Garden, surrounded by charts nobody understood, and declared war on mathematics. One year later, not even the Rose Garden remains.

It's being called "The Greatest Economic Own Goal in Living Memory" -- and that was before the same goal-scorer launched a war without a strategy that's locked up twenty percent of the world's traded oil behind the mullahs' missiles. 

This, above, was one year ago today when Donald Trump stood in the White House's Rose Garden to shoot himself and world trade in the foot. 

Today, we 'celebrate' the anniversary of  one man's gut feelings over economic reality...

One Year On: The Greatest Economic Own Goal in Living Memory
by Gandalv 

One year ago, Donald Trump stood in the Rose Garden, surrounded by charts nobody understood, and declared war on mathematics. He called it Liberation Day. 

The Financial Times, along with every economist who has read more than a bus ticket, is marking the anniversary with a verdict that should be carved into marble: it failed. On every single front. Spectacularly. Completely. Embarrassingly. 

Let us be precise about this. 

Measured against Trump’s own three stated goals, making foreigners pay for doing business with America, narrowing the trade deficit, and punishing China, the tariffs have clearly failed. Not partially failed. Not failed with asterisks. Failed the way a man fails when he drives a Reliant Robin the wrong way onto a motorway and acts surprised when it rolls. 

And everyone said so. Economists said so. Trading partners said so. His own party said so. The entire field of international trade theory, developed over roughly two centuries by people who actually read things, screamed it from the rooftops. [Even this humble blog said so.] But Donald Trump, a man whose relationship with economics appears to consist entirely of gut feeling, cable television and 6 casino bankruptcies knew better. 

The average American household paid an extra $1,700 due to tariffs. Over 65 percent of Americans reported that everyday goods became significantly less affordable. This is what happens when you run the world’s largest economy on instinct and vibes. 

One year after the Rose Garden ceremony, factory jobs are down and inflation is up. The precise opposite of what was promised. And promised with extraordinary (and wholly unjustified) confidence. 

Then the lawyers arrived. 

The Supreme Court found that Trump had exceeded his authority, ruling that the declared emergency bore no rational connection to the trade measures imposed. In other words, the legal foundation was nonsense. The government had collected $166 billion in tariffs from over 330,000 businesses on grounds the Supreme Court found unconstitutional. The refund process is now underway.  One hundred and sixty-six billion dollars. Collected illegally. From American businesses. 

The financial markets, bless them, responded with the only appropriate tool available: mockery. The meme “Trump Always Chickens Out” refuses to go away, and the TACO index is now actively used by analysts to price in the president’s chronic habit of retreating. 

Every serious voice warned this disaster would happen. Trade economists. Former Treasury secretaries. The IMF. The WTO. The EU. Canada. Japan. Basically anyone who had spent more than forty minutes studying how global trade actually works. The man who ignored all of them had previously run a casino into bankruptcy and considered that a learning experience. He was not, it turns out, a fast learner. 

One year. 

Zero of three goals achieved. 

One Supreme Court ruling. 

One $170 billion refund. 

A world economy paying more for everything and making less of it. 

Liberation Day. What a name for it.