Tariff Trump Isn’t Fighting Chaos—He’s Manufacturing It

The responsible way to implement tariffs would have been simple: propose a tariff regime, send it through Congress, and allow elected representatives to debate, amend, and authorize it through law. Given America's painful historical lesson from the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930, which tightened the vise on an already collapsing economy, this would have been particularly true.

However, Donald Trump does not function in that manner.

Instead of treating tariffs as major tax policy, which is exactly what they are, a consumption tax paid by Americans, Trump treated them like a personal lever he could yank whenever he felt like projecting “toughness.” The result was predictable: government by improvisation, policy by impulse, and a constant fog of uncertainty for businesses trying to plan beyond next quarter.

And about “getting the money back”: the only people with any plausible claim to relief would be the American public, because they’re the ones who absorbed the costs through higher prices. Anybody can continue to wait for refunds or some clever little reimbursement system. Tariffs are marketed that way in slogans, but that's not how they operate in reality.

Then there’s the sales pitch about “trillions in investment.” Alright, let's use the most basic test imaginable: where are the factories?  Where are the new production plants breaking ground in numbers that match the rhetoric? You can’t run an industrial renaissance on press releases. A serious investment boom leaves visible, measurable footprints: construction starts, equipment orders, hiring pipelines, supply contracts, and local tax filings. If those footprints are missing, then the “trillions” were never more than a headline.

Additionally, Trump declared that tariffs would make Americans so wealthy that "we won't know how to spend all that money." His base believed it then, and many still believe it now, waiting for the mythical “tariff dividend” to show up like a late direct deposit. The same audience was told that DOGE, or whatever shiny talking point was trending that week, was a triumph and that dividends would eventually materialize. The pattern is familiar: grand claims, vague accounting, and a perpetually postponed payoff.

Which raises the obvious question: what happened to the supposed billions in tariff revenue? Are those “billions” even real in the sense the public was led to imagine? And if they are real, why was there never a clear, transparent, publicly accountable mechanism for tracking what was collected, where it went, and how it offset any broader economic damage? This administration managed to run a sweeping tariff program with not even the appearance of competent stewardship, no coherent reporting, no credible audit trail communicated to the public, and no consistent explanation that didn’t change depending on the day’s political needs.

From the beginning, the tariff agenda was less an economic strategy than a rolling disorder: exemptions here, reversals there, threats, walk-backs, sudden escalations, and an approach that made it nearly impossible for firms to make long-term commitments. And that’s the core point Trump never seems to understand or refuses to admit:

He isn’t responding to chaos. He is the mayhem.

Finally, don’t ignore the institutional angle. Not only did Trump sell tariffs, but he also normalized the notion that a president can use executive manoeuvring to manipulate significant economic policy while dismissing Congress as an annoyance. Based on recent trends, it wouldn't be shocking if this came before a Supreme Court with a conservative majority and the Court gave him a lot of leeway. That might be the real political circumstance. This, however, does not make the approach reasonable, ethically sound, or advantageous for a constitutional system designed to prohibit precisely this kind of one-man economic rule.

If this all collapses into higher prices, disrupted trade, and another round of self-inflicted economic wounds, it won’t be because “the system” failed Trump. The reason for this is that Trump's strategy of confusing, controlling the news cycle, avoiding responsibility, and leaving the public in the dark is ineffective.

And Americans should treat it accordingly.

Sarge