The Tribune

with CHARLIE HARPER

What motivates Donald Trump? On available evidence, it’s overwhelmingly his own self-interest. But that manifests itself in several ways.

Loyalty, retribution and greed are often cited as side-effects of his overpowering narcissistic sense of his own importance.

It was abundantly clear months ago that a key qualification for service in his new, second administration would be unwavering loyalty to him. This is evident not only in the several stunningly unqualified candidates he offered for leading federal jobs in Washington.

It also manifests itself in the public fealty paid to him by the many qualified and well-regarded nominees he has selected. Senior members of his national security team are only one example of this phenomenon.

Retribution is apparent on an almost daily basis. One facet of this is Trump’s unprecedented revocation of Secret Service protection for members of the previous Biden administration who were guilty of real or perceived disrespect for Trump.

Former Centers for Disease Control director Anthony Fauci and former chairman of the Joint Military Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley are just two notable examples. After (and even, discretely, before) Trump lost to Biden in 2020, both men were harshly critical of Trump’s whimsical, inconsistent and occasionally idiotic views on public health and national security. Remember his recommendation that people inject laundry bleach as an antidote for COVID-19?

Now, back in the White House, Trump has moved quickly to deliver his punishment. But Milley and Fauci not only lost their protective details – necessary, by the way, mostly due to Trump’s stirring up public outrage at their defiance of his policy and persona – but they were also stripped of their government security clearances.

Such an action can have severe personal economic consequences. For many former senior government officials, access to sensitive information remains a key qualification for two often-lucrative post-government service endeavors. These are consulting for private business and the writing of memoirs, which both generally bring significant financial rewards.

Among those being stripped of their security clearances last week were former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan, New York Attorney General Letitia James and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. The latter two took leading roles in the principal non-federal criminal cases that were brought against Trump during the Biden administration.

Trump himself commented on his predecessor at a February conservative conference outside Washington. “I also revoked Joe Biden’s security clearances, the Biden crime family security clearances, and they’ll no longer be allowed to access state secrets while selling themselves all around the world. Oh, well. No, these were bad people.”

Greed is actually less apparent in this administration than in Trump’s first term as president. Then, he was credibly accused of pushing government-related business to his Washington DC hotel and to several of his golf courses. His influence likely contributed to the multi-billion-dollar investment by Middle East oil oligarchs in a hedge fund established by his son in law.

Overall, though, the defining characteristic of this second Trump administration has been retribution. This man, who has spent the past 40 years seeking (and achieving) publicity, prominence and notoriety, remains phenomenally and inexplicably thin-skinned.

It is often speculated that Trump finally decided to run for president after he felt then-president Barack Obama humiliated him in front of a large audience of prominent Washington insiders in April 2011.

The John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, spectacularly situated with gorgeous views over the sweep of the Potomac River below, has become another sore point for Trump. He has openly expressed disdain for the “elites” who have long populated its Board of Directors and decided whom to reward with the centre’s annual awards – somewhat presumptuously labelled “The Kennedy Center Honors”.

Almost immediately upon moving back into the Oval Office, Trump fired the centre’s director and its board, replacing them with loyalists and installing himself as Board chair.

In addition to its honours, the Kennedy Center also hosts symphonic and a wide variety of other musical concerts and events; stage plays, and many other artistic performances. Since Trump’s purge of the organisation’s leadership, some artists and companies who had been booked to perform there have already backed out. The announcement of the annual honours, normally made earlier in the fall, has annually been televised just before Christmas.

Trump has mused that he may host them himself this year. Lists of now ‘politically correct’ laureates are already circulating.

Petty and not so petty revenge and retribution have informed many of Trump’s actions as president.

But what about tariffs?

Where do they fit into this paradigm of greed, retribution and loyalty?

Given that most economists seem to feel that Trump’s obsession with tariffs is pushing the world economy toward a largely gratuitous recession, where is this dangerous and potentially destructive fascination coming from?

Tariffs are taxes imposed by the government of a country on imports. They are generally enacted in order to protect or stimulate the growth of key sectors of that nation’s economy.

The French government, for example, for decades applied tariffs on many imported agricultural goods in order to protect its farming sector from inexpensive imported foodstuffs – much of it from the US and Canada.

And at the dawn of the American industrial age, US presidents did apply tariffs on certain imports to protect nascent industries.

That was well over a century ago.

Trump claims he is imposing tariffs now, notably on largest American trade partners China, Canada and Mexico, to stimulate a rebirth of the US industrial sector. Pundits mock him, noting that the age of American heavy manufacturing has long past, and point instead to high-tech generally and artificial intelligence in particular as more likely to impel American economic growth and prosperity going forward.

Trump himself is now acknowledging that his protectionist policies will likely cause a broad recession. They will likely nourish persistent inflation. The millions of Trump voters who believed his promises to wipe out inflation will be disappointed. Will they also be disillusioned?

There are already reports of “buyers’ remorse” from some Trump loyal voters whose economic prospects are cratering after his tariff decisions.

But how does his principal foreign policy lieutenant justify them? Here’s a lengthy exposition by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to reporters recently:

“So, let me explain on the tariffs. This is important for everybody to understand. This keeps being characterised as a hostile move against our allies. These are global tariffs on steel, on aluminum, on autos, on semiconductors eventually. But what this administration has also discussed is a global reciprocal tariff regime. Understand what that means. That means basically whatever some country charges us, that’s what we’re going to charge them.

“The President has made very clear that he wants to reset the baseline of international trade, which he believes is unfair to the United States. This is not meant as a hostile move against Japan or Germany or anybody else. This is about balancing and fairness in trade.

“And once that general baseline is reset, then you can enter into bilateral negotiations with individual countries about changes that can be made to our trade, our bilateral trade, so that it’s fair for both sides. That’s his goal. In his first administration, the President did tariffs as well. What he was disturbed by in hindsight is the fact that they included a bunch of exemptions that basically made them meaningless. And so, what he wants to get back to is basically fairness in trade. It’s as simple as that.

“And we want to charge other countries what they charge us. There are industries that are critical to the United States and to our domestic security and our future. And he’s identified them: steel, aluminum, semiconductors, automobiles. These are things that we believe are in our interest to have a domestic capacity, and we have to protect these industries from what we feel is subsidisation and unfair competition from abroad.

“Take the European Union as an example. The EU has a GDP basically comparable to that of the United States. Their economy is similar to ours. These are not developing countries; these are developed countries. And yet they have a significant trade surplus with the United States even though our economies are pretty much the same. These are not low-wage countries. That’s a problem. All the President is saying is we need to equalise treatment.”