Comment by nmeofthestate
11 days ago
I genuinely don't believe there's five-dimensional chess happening here. The problem is simply that the US president is a repugnant, stupid, erratic egotist who's surrounded himself with nasty people of varying levels of intelligence, with stupid ideas about how to run the country, and this is the policy result.
To be clear, I don't think it's chess either. I think Trump likes tariffs and wants to appear strong by slapping them around. I think some, but not all of his hangers-on are using this to push for a recession. There are multiple hands on the levers of power here, but there's a common interest in transforming the US into a Russia-style oligarchy.