Trump Imagines He's Administering Medicine Instead Of Poison To The American People

In 2028 Trump and the Republican Party and their policies will have been fully rejected and repudiated by American voters. Will the country be welcomed back into the community of nations? “Trump,” wrote Jonathan Lemire, “is willing to take the pain. Ha! Lemire wrote that “Taking further steps today to escalate his global trade war, the president has ignored the deep plunges on Wall Street that have cost the economy trillions of dollars and accelerated risks of a bear market. He has tuned out the wall-to-wall coverage, at least on some cable networks, about the self-inflicted wounds he has dealt the U.S. economy. And unlike eight years ago, few members of Trump’s team are looking to rein him in, and those who think differently have almost all opted against publicly voicing disagreement. Trump is showing no signs— at least not yet— of being encumbered by political considerations as he makes the biggest bet of his presidency, according to three White House officials and two outside allies… Emboldened by his historic comeback, he believes that launching a trade battle is his best chance to fundamentally remake the American economy, elites and experts be damned. ‘This man was politically dead and survived both four criminal cases and an assassination attempt to be president again. He really believes in this and is going to go big,’ one of the outside allies told me. ‘His pain threshold is high to get this done.’ What’s not clear, even to some of those closest to him, is what will count as a victory.”

The president has likened his tariffs to giving “medicine” to a sick patient, but they have caused widespread confusion— particularly over whether Trump is committed to keeping the plan in place for years to boost U.S. manufacturing or whether he is using the new tariffs as a negotiating ploy to force other countries to change their policies.

“We have many, many countries coming to negotiate deals with us, and they’re going to be fair deals,” Trump told reporters today in the Oval Office, adding that he would not pause the tariffs despite another day of Wall Street turbulence. “No other president’s going to do this, what I’m doing.”

Markets plunged around the globe today for a third straight trading day after Trump announced his sweeping “Liberation Day” set of tariffs that almost instantly remade the United States’ trading relationship with the rest of the world. He imposed universal levies on nearly all the world’s economies and imposed even steeper duties on many nations. He has said that Americans should expect short-term pain (“HANG TOUGH,” he declared on social media) as he attempts to make the U.S. economy less dependent on foreign-made goods.

The blowback has been extensive and relentless. Other nations responded with retaliatory levies. Fears of a recession spiked. CEOs, after panicking privately for days, are beginning to speak out. Most cable channels have been bathed in the red of graphs depicting plunging markets, the stock ticker in the corner falling ever downward. Even Fox News, which has downplayed the crisis, has begun carrying stories about the impact on Trump voters who are worried about shrinking retirement accounts and rising prices. GOP lawmakers, usually loath to cross the White House, are mulling trying to limit the president’s economic authority. Senator Ted Cruz worried that the tariffs would cause a 2026 midterms “bloodbath,” while seven other GOP senators, including Trump allies such as Chuck Grassley, signed on to a bipartisan bill that would require Congress to approve Trump’s steep tariffs on trading partners.

Trump has stayed committed to the tariffs, and lashed out at wavering Republicans today on social media, declaring them “Weak and Stupid” and warning, “Don’t be a PANICAN,” while his staff promised a veto of the bipartisan bill.

Yet even within Trump’s administration, the president’s moves have caused widespread confusion about what he is trying to get out of the tariffs. Peter Navarro, one of the administration’s most influential voices on trade, wrote in the Financial Times, “This is not a negotiation. For the US, it is a national emergency triggered by trade deficits caused by a rigged system.” Just a short time later, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wrote on social media that he had been tasked by Trump to begin negotiations with Japan and that he looks “forward to our upcoming productive engagement regarding tariffs, non-tariff trade barriers, currency issues, and government subsidies.”

That public disconnect brought private disagreements into the light, two of the White House officials and the other outside ally told me. Navarro and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller— who is perceived by many in Trump’s orbit as the most powerful aide on most issues— have embraced the idea that the tariffs should be permanent to erase trade deficits with other countries and even punish some nations, including China, for what the White House says are decades of unfair trade practices. Steve Bannon, the influential outside Trump adviser, has said on his podcast that bringing nations to the negotiating table is not enough and that the White House needs to insist that companies make commitments to bolster domestic manufacturing.

Bessent, a former hedge fund manager who once worked for George Soros, has expressed some hesitancy about the tariffs behind closed doors, according to two of the White House officials. (The Treasury Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.) While stopping short of disagreeing with Trump, Bessent has tried to soften the impact of the duties in public interviews. On Sunday, he said on Meet the Press that “I see no reason that we have to price in a recession” and hinted that the tariffs could be temporary since a number of nations had already sought negotiations. Meanwhile, Elon Musk, who to this point has been Trump’s most visible adviser, today posted a well-known video of economist Milton Friedman touting free trade. That followed a weekend during which Musk took aim at Navarro, suggesting that his push for steep trade barriers was too extreme.

Trump himself hardly cleared up the inconsistent messaging when asked in the Oval Office this afternoon if the tariffs were a negotiating tool or were going to be permanent. “Well, they can both be true,” Trump said. “There can be permanent tariffs, and there can also be negotiations because there are things that we need beyond tariffs.”

…Many Republicans had hoped that Trump’s economic policy would focus on extending his 2017 tax cuts (which disproportionately helped business and the wealthy) while also tackling inflation. But while Trump has long possessed a flexible ideology, one of his few consistent principles, dating to at least the 1980s, is a belief in tariffs, even though many economists believe they are outdated and ineffective in an era of globalization.

Trump has done little to enact his campaign promise to bring down prices and has surprised some observers with his willingness to endanger his poll numbers by taking on such a risky tariff scheme. While Trump is notorious for changing his mind on a whim, he is for now ignoring the complaints from business leaders and warnings about the tariffs’ impact on his own voters.

By 2028, the American economy will likely be reeling from the cumulative blowback of Trump’s chaotic tariff-fueled trade wars, regulatory sabotage and contempt for international economic cooperation. His prescription of “medicine” for a sick economy— massive tariffs, threats to withdraw from the WTO, unilateral sanctions on allies, a weaponized dollar— will have turned chronic ailments into systemic crises. Supply chains, already fragile, will be shattered by erratic policy shifts. Critical imports— pharmaceutical ingredients, rare earth minerals, industrial components— will become prohibitively expensive or simply unavailable. Small businesses will collapse under the weight of unpredictable costs, while major manufacturers begin quietly moving operations abroad, not to chase cheap labor, but to escape Trump’s economic carnage. 

This isn't be a downturn. It'sl be a poorly controlled demolition. One triggered not by external shocks, but by deliberate choices: the targeting of key trading partners like Mexico, South Korea, and the EU; the imposition of across-the-board tariffs that function as a national sales tax; the collapse of consumer confidence driven by political instability and investor panic. Trump may call this "reindustrialization," but to most Americans it will look like empty shelves, pink slips, and exploding prices.

And politically, Republicans won’t be able to wash their hands of it no matterhow hard they try. This time, they'll own it. There’s no Paul Ryan fig leaf, no “adults in the room.” They’ve purged the technocrats, silenced the critics, and handed the wheel to a man determined to drive off a cliff because he thinks gravity is fake news. Voters who might have tolerated the chaos once— who bought the promise of economic nationalism— will be staring down a second Great Recession, one made in America, by Americans, for the benefit of no one. The backlash won’t be subtle. It will be generational.

Internationally, the damage will be even more profound. Allies who once gave America the benefit of the doubt will have learned their lesson: the U.S. is no longer a reliable partner. NATO, at best, will be on life support. Global institutions hollowed out. China, sensing the vacuum, will fill it— economically, diplomatically, even militarily. When the world begins to rebuild, it won’t look to Washington for leadership. It may not even return the call.

The only silver lining? Trump’s wreckage may finally cure the country of its addiction to performative strongmen and supply-side fairy tales. But the cost of the lesson will be staggering—measured in bankruptcies, global instability, and a Republican Party that won’t recover in our lifetime.