If you aren’t willing to make adjustments, and you aren’t continually grinding it out, day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and year in, you are unlikely to achieve anything except blather.
“We have a deal,” President Donald Trump declared after meeting with his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping in Busan, South Korea last week. He was referring to an agreement to lower tariffs and fees on Chinese imports in exchange for improved global access to rare earth minerals, which China had been limiting – to be sure, at least partially as a result of the Trump Administration’s tariffs in the first place – more controls on fentanyl exports, and more soybean and sorghum purchases from US farmers. “Now, every year we’ll renegotiate the deal, but I think the deal will go on for a long time, long beyond the year. But all of the rare earth has been settled, and that’s for the world,” he added in a comment that seemed rather strange to his Democrat opponents and most of the economic establishment. After all, isn’t a deal a deal, and once it’s done, it’s done? Isn’t the alternative chaos and uncertainty in a world desperate for stability of some kind? Nor was this the first such instance of President Trump’s willingness to constantly negotiate and re-negotiate whenever he believes there is either a problem to be solved or an opportunity at hand. Earlier in the same trip, he did much the same with South Korea – agreeing to reduce tariffs on auto exports that were only recently put in place in exchange for increased investment in the United States – and otherwise, he either secured existing trade deals or negotiated new minerals deals with Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. Shortly before the trip, he signed a brand new rare-earth metals deal with Australia that no one seemed aware was in the works and earlier in the year he seemingly blew upon the revised North American Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico that he’d personally spearheaded in his first term. In between, he touted deals in the Middle East, seemingly making them large and small, anywhere and everywhere, and then making them again whenever he sees fit.
To many, however, engaging in these constant negotiations backed by ever-changing tariffs plus other carrots and sticks causes unnecessary chaos, leading to negative impact on the economy and global relations. After this most recent trip, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer claimed the President was “patting himself hard on the back for cleaning up a mess he created.” For her part, Democrat Senator Jeanne Shaheen noted something similar, insisting, “The president’s incoherent and haphazard use of tariffs has left China with virtually the same tariffs as many of our allies in Southeast Asia and lower tariffs than Canada and India—all just to get back to where we started on rare-earth exports and to secure commitments on fentanyl precursors that were always within China’s capacity.” Others insisted that China in particular poses some kind of insurmountable dilemma, somehow surprised that the largest economy in the world and the controller of most mineral mining has leverage. Wendy Cutler, senior vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said the deal with China “was in sharp contrast to the other trade agreements that Trump has concluded in recent days, which were heavily tilted in the U.S. favor. Trump has met his match with China, which has shown that two can play at this game.” Even largely friendly sources, such as Ed Morrisey from the conservative HotAir.com noted that the deal was only a temporary victory, describing it as “Good news? For the moment, anyway.” Meanwhile, Dean Baker, writing for the Center for Economic and Policy Research, did everyone including the Democrat politicians one better. Summarizing President Trump’s entire approach as “The Economics of Crazy,” he asked, “It is striking that many people feel the need to claim that Donald Trump has some coherent economic plan for the country. It’s understandable that Trump’s team likes to pretend that his random ramblings and angry acts of revenge are all part of some grand strategy, but why would anyone not on his payroll play along with this obvious absurdity?” In his view, the President “doesn’t have even a basic understanding of arithmetic and percentages. That “would be bad in and of itself,” but he’s also “obviously confused about many things when it comes to the economy. He seems to think that other countries pay tariffs and send the U.S. checks. He also seems to think that wind and solar power are very expensive sources of energy. And he seems to think that the economy was collapsing when he took office. All of these claims are 180 degrees at odds with reality, but it is extremely unlikely that his aides would be able to correct him on these or other absurd views that Trump seems to hold. Given how out of touch Trump is with reality and the inability of his aides to correct him on anything, why would anyone think that he has a coherent economic strategy?” Ultimately, Mr. Baker concluded, “It is bad for the country and the world that policy in the United States is being determined by a man child who has no idea what he is doing beyond stuffing his pockets, but that is the reality.”
To me at least, two things jump out with this and other, even at times favorable assessments. First, if President Trump’s strategy is incoherent or essentially temporary, why is he signing rare-rare earth deals around the world and pushing to expand US production? While I agree with Mr. Morrisey that this is only a temporary settlement, it’s equally clear that the President probably wants it that way and Ms. Cutler will likely be proven wrong in her assessment over time: As more mines around the world produce more minerals, China will have less leverage. We might not be in a position to get precisely what we want now, but the President has no plans in keeping the status quo either. This is the opening salvo in what will be an extended campaign. Second, we also have to wonder precisely who is at odds with economic reality at this point. Beyond the President’s penchant for exaggeration and general showmanship, many experts like Mr. Baker himself have spent the past six months carrying on about tariffs as the end of the world, but the disastrous outcomes they predicted haven’t happened yet and increasingly seem unlikely to happen at all. On the contrary, the great majority of economic news has been positive outside a job market that began softening long before the President retook office. Mike Garcia, writing for Real Clear Politics, recently summarized how rapidly we went from “Doom to Boom.” “Six months ago, critics warned that President Donald Trump’s tariffs would crush the economy,” he began. “They said Americans would face soaring prices and crashing markets. The reality? As we near the end of 2025, the story looks very different. Growth is up, markets are strong, and strategic onshore opportunities are emerging.” In his view, tariffs are boosting revenue, some $300 billion or more per year of much needed funds that are “supporting military families and making sure our service members receive their paychecks on time during the government shutdown,” they are “solving America’s trade problems” with new, much more favorable deals around the world including the UK and the EU in addition to the recent Asia achievements, while securing “hundreds of billions in new investment – a tremendous boost for American workers and companies.” He also noted how investor “confidence has soared, with major indices hitting record highs. All three major indexes – the S&P 500, Dow Jones, and Nasdaq—hit all-time highs this month, reflecting optimism about economic growth and corporate earnings,” inflation is stabilizing after the “Federal Reserve’s preferred measure – the PCE Price Index – rose just 0.3% in August, bringing the annual rate to 2.7%, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Core inflation, which excludes food and energy, held at 2.9%, right around the Fed’s target. Given consistent increases in average wage growth, real wages have remained stable,” and as a result, interest rates are now dropping, “On Sept. 17, it cut the federal funds rate by 25 basis points to 4.00-4.25% – the first cut since December 2024. With expectations of at least two more rate cuts before year-end, it is clear that the dramatic inflationary pressures the left predicted simply haven’t appeared.”
In conclusion, Mr. Garcia pointed to a recent surge in GDP, fueled by “consumer spending and business investment, especially in AI, second-quarter GDP growth was revised up to an annualized rate of 3.8%” and the potential promise of manufacturing jobs coming home thanks to the “largest foreign investment commitments in American history, generating hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs, expanding domestic manufacturing, and securing American prosperity for generations.” Thus, the “warnings of an economic disaster haven’t come true. Instead, the U.S. economy is growing, inflation is controlled, and markets are confident. These results show that, when used thoughtfully, tariffs can be a powerful tool – not just for revenue, but for national security and long-term economic advantage.” Nor is Mr. Garcia the only person recently touting the advantages of President Trump’s constant negotiation and backed-by tariffs strategy. Earlier this year, Torsten Slok, chief economist for Apollo Global Management, asked “Has Trump Outsmarted Everyone on Tariffs?” Though he’d previously warned that tariffs were likely to cause a recession as soon as the summer, claiming there would be a “stagflation shock” to the entire economy, he has since changed his mind. Back in April, Fortune Magazine summarized Apollo’s not-so rosy report, which was co-authored by Mr. Slock, associate director Rajvi Shah, and associate Shruti Galwankar. “Based on Apollo’s potential sequence of events, shipping containers from China to the U.S. slowed down after President Trump’s Liberation Day tariff address this month. Allowing for 20-to-40 days travel time, containers shipped to U.S. ports could halt in May. By mid-May, that would portend a rapid slowdown in demand for trucking, which would be followed by less stock in stores for people to purchase. With those signs, that would mean sluggish sales in spring, while subsequent layoffs in retail and trucking could come by late May and early June. Then, in summer 2025, a full recession could take root.” At the time, he was far from the only one to make that prediction, but by July, Mr. Shlock had revised his opinion, being intellectually honest enough to reconsider after he realized that President Trump was willing to negotiate and adapt on tariffs. As he put it an email to investors over the summer, rather than leaving the highest rates in place, President Trump planned to negotiate, using them as an initial offer, “Maybe the strategy is to maintain 30% tariffs on China and 10% tariffs on all other countries and then give all countries 12 months to lower nontariff barriers and open up their economies to trade.”
From there, he considered a “new world with permanently higher tariffs.” “This would seem like a victory for the world and yet would produce $400 billion of annual revenue for U.S. taxpayers,” he added. “Trade partners will be happy with only 10% tariffs and U.S. tax revenue will go up. Maybe the administration has outsmarted all of us” he concluded, but what was left largely unsaid: The critical role President Trump’s combination of constant negotiations and eagerness to make deals has played in these developments. Though Mr. Slock alluded to this by mentioning a world of permanently higher tariffs lower than the initial Liberation Day onslaught, he and the rest of the broader establishment have frequently failed to consider how this could be achieved in any other fashion. If you aren’t willing to make adjustments, starting out high and settling somewhere lower, and you aren’t continually grinding it out, day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and year in, you are unlikely to achieve your objectives. While this should be obvious to most, this isn’t how the political establishment sees it. In their view, deals whether for economic, defensive, or other purposes are somehow negotiated in perpetuity, as though there were permanent guarantees in life, somehow set and forget for all time, but as anyone in business knows, this isn’t the case. Instead, those of us who work in the private sector are constantly negotiating with our suppliers and customers and constantly revising our offerings and price points because we understand that our competitors are doing the same. If we were to attempt to freeze our approach for even a brief period, our company is likely to fall behind and potentially go out of business. By most standards, the past five decades of establishment failure reveal this to be a requirement of successful government as well. Setting aside our calcified, ineffective international order, globalism’s potential to erode the working class isn’t something newly discovered or something President Trump made up on the campaign trail. In fact, Bob Dylan was singing about it as far back as 1983, when he wrote:
Well, my shoes, they come from Singapore
My flashlight’s from Taiwan
My tablecloth’s from Malaysia
My belt buckle’s from the Amazon
You know, this shirt I wear comes from the Philippines
And the car I drive is a Chevrolet
It was put together down in Argentina
By a guy making thirty cents a day
Well, it’s sundown on the union
And what’s made in the USA
Sure was a good idea
‘Til greed got in the way
What did the establishment do in the following forty plus years? Nothing, and why did they do so? Because they refused to adjust their positions, preferring blather rather than action, much less confront other countries to demand better terms, forget doing so repeatedly and forget trying to change the rules of the game as the administration is doing with rare earths and other vital resources. President Trump, however, is rapidly changing all that and so far, it appears to be working, despite the repeated claims of chaos and impending doom.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 