‘The Art of Incompetence’: How Trump’s economic amateurs cost the U.S. trillions

S tock market chaos and global fury have grown since Donald Trump’s trade war announcement, with erratic tariffs being imposed on countries worldwide, sparking fears of a deepening global economic crisis.

As markets plummet and global partners recoil, Washington faces growing questions about the competence of President Trump’s inner circle in managing the escalating trade war. Experts say the administration’s insistence on an improvised and opaque tariff formula has shaken investor confidence and sparked a diplomatic backlash.

“To anyone on Wall Street this morning, I would say trust in President Trump,” insisted White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on CNN. “This is a president who is doubling down on his proven economic formula from his first term.”

But Wall Street was anything but reassured — Thursday alone saw approximately $3.1 trillion wiped from the markets in a dramatic vote of no confidence.

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, who served under President Clinton, issued a stark warning: “Usually, when you have a terrible stock market experience, it’s because a bank fails or there’s a pandemic or there’s a hurricane or some other country does something. We don’t have these kind of stock market responses in response to polices that the president of the United States is proud of. That is something that is entirely without precedent, and it is extremely dangerous.”

Peter Tuchman, a 40-year veteran of the New York Stock Exchange, has warned that the cost of former President Donald Trump’s economic nationalism may now be coming due — and fast. He pointed in particular to what he described as the economic incompetence of Trump’s team in handling tariffs with a bizarre formula.

“They know nothing,” the former trader widely known as ‘the Einstein of Wall Street’ and considered a walking encyclopaedia of market insight told CNN. “The formula they used … it’s like apples, oranges, a couple of cashews divided by 10 times four. None of it makes any sense, and billions and trillions of dollars are being wiped out of the market on a day-to-day basis. It was nothing but blood on the streets.”

“This is the biggest policy mistake in 95 years,” Jeremy Siegel, Professor Emeritus of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and Wisdom Tree Chief Economist, told CNBC.

Referring to the Smoot-Hawley tariffs imposed nearly a century ago — widely regarded as “among the most catastrophic acts in congressional history” — he questioned the current president’s rationale.

“I don’t know why Trump didn’t learnt the lesson of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs,” Siegel said. “You know, trade is a much more important part of the global economy than it was 95 years ago when the Smoot-Hawley tariff was put on. So the implications are potentially a lot worse.”

GOING FURTHER:

• Dow nosedives nearly 1,700 points for worst day since 2020 as bloodbath wipes out $3.1 trillion after Trump’s reciprocal tariffs | NEW YORK POST

• The bizarre way Trump’s team calculated reciprocal tariffs | CBC NEWS

• Markets plunge as Trump pushes ahead with global ‘reciprocal’ tariffs | INVESTMENT WEEK

• Trump’s erratic trade policies are baffling businesses, threatening investment and economic growth | THE INDEPENDENT

• Trump’s self-inflicted tariff crisis sparks confusion, chaos and questions of competence | CNN

• IMF warns of ‘significant risk’ to global economy from Trump tariffs as markets plunge | THE GUARDIAN

• Trump’s ‘idiotic’ and flawed tariff calculations stun economists | THE GUARDIAN

• Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act | BRITANNICA

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▪ Cover: Flickr/The White House. (Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.)