Oh great, experiment with the world's most successful economy

Trump wants sweeping economic change. Why?

Schedule note:

A busy April here at All Predictions Wrong

On Friday the 11th, reupping my essay about why Easter, not Christmas, is the essence of Christian theology. (This year Western and Orthodox Easter fall on the same day.)

On Friday the 18th, just before Easter, something unusual. A short story version of the longest known conversation Jesus had with any person.

His interlocutor was a Samaritan (unclean to a rabbi like Jesus) who was a sexually free woman (doubly unclean). Jesus showed her a degree of respect he withheld from Pharisees and Roman governors. The episode is an essential of the Gospels that’s little-known.

Tuesday April 22, from the sublime to the ridiculous – TMQ mocks the mock drafts.

Friday April 25, my annual Bad Predictions Review.

Tuesday April 29, Tuesday Morning Quarterback reviews the NFL draft.

Whew! Nothing on Friday May 2.

As he started a global trade war this week, Donald Trump promised to “fundamentally transform” the American economy. That’s not long after Barack Obama promised “fundamental transformation” of the entire United States.

America is the greatest nation on Earth. Improve, sure. Why do presidents want to transform it?

Trump’s 2024 slogan, Make America Great Again, suggests we’re some feeble, crumbling state. Is there any nation – okay, maybe Switzerland – that wouldn’t trade places with us? And maybe not even Switzerland, since we have tremendous growth potential, Helvetia has none.

Obama’s 2008 campaign slogan was the single word, in caps, CHANGE. The majority voted for that premise: “I want change! I’m sick of all this freedom and plenty!”

Trump and Obama are only the most visible examples. National figures including Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Joe Rogan and Elon Musk have said everything must change. Authors, elite-college professors and The Atlantic pound the table for change constantly.

The big question – why?

Sure the world is full of problems, with more coming. The United States needs myriad levels of improvement.

But in the main, the country and its economy are in good condition. It ain’t broke. Yet Trump wants to fix it.

Photo by Alex on Unsplash

During the home stretch of the 2024 campaign, Trump called the United States “a failing nation” whose “economy has been destroyed.” Trump pronounced, “We must save the American economy” because “jobs numbers are terrible.” On the day Trump said this, unemployment was 4.3 percent– a figure that would have caused economists for Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan to drop to their knees and kiss the ground.

Substack’s own Paul Krugman looks at the history of stiff tariffs of the sort Trump just imposed, and it isn’t pretty. Stiff tariffs tend to backfire on nations that enact them. A bit like the saying, “Holding onto anger is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

China would exchange places with the American economy in the blink of an eye! Last year America had almost 70 percent more GDP output than China.

Why is Trump risking this on a tariff experiment?

American society is deep into a cycle of pessimism and self-hatred. Everything is bad and getting worse, especially to academia, both political parties and the legacy media.

Things are so dismal the New York Times used the phrase “existential crisis” about America 26 times last year. No wait -- that’s how many times the paper used that phrase last month.