Why Trump's tariff U-turn is another sign he's a 'moron', not a genius

Donald Trump’s reaction to falling stock markets offers a glimmer of hope

To some, Donald Trump is a business operator without parallel, so skilled that his moves bamboozle critics who fail to see his brilliance because of their failings.

So when the US President imposed sweeping tariffs on the world and criticised "weak and stupid people" he dubbed “panicans” for worrying about the economy, but then, amid falling stock markets, backtracked by issuing a 90-day pause on most tariffs of greater than 10 per cent, this was no embarrassing U-turn. It was all part of the plan.

"You clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told journalists. "You tried to say that the rest of the world would be moved closer to China, when in fact, we've seen the opposite effect. The entire world is calling the United States of America, not China, because they need our markets.” So Trump was not being a “panican”, he’d mapped everything out in his head.

Donald Trump has described 'tariff' as his favourite word (Picture: Chip Somodevilla) | Getty Images

Wisdom of stock market crowds

This argument was undermined by Trump’s own remarks that the markets looked "pretty glum" and “people were getting a little queasy”, an admission which actually offers a glimmer of hope.

If Trump can be influenced by the markets, there is a chance they can act in a similar fashion to the wiser heads in his first-term Cabinet who dissuaded him from his wilder ideas and who are largely missing from his current administration.

One of those wiser heads was Rex Tillerson, Trump’s Secretary of State for just over a year. He was sacked not long after reports he had privately called his boss a “moron”, a remark which he did not publicly deny.

Tillerson, a former ExxonMobil chief executive, later said it had been “challenging” to move from that “disciplined, highly process-oriented” company to work for a man “who is pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefing reports, doesn’t like to get into the details of a lot of things, but rather just kind of says, ‘this is what I believe.’”

Trump’s climbdown is welcome, but we suspect his idiotic fondness for his favourite word, ‘tariff’, will continue to trouble the world for some time to come.