Donald Trump sees the world in terms of deals, deals in terms of personal relationships, and personal relationships in terms of who’s on top.
America is top dog in the world, Trump is top dog in America, and as long as foreign leaders recognise this and pay appropriate obeisance, he sees them as friends – in the same sense in which Vito Corleone saw his underlings as friends.
(I know I’ve drawn analogies between Trump and The Godfather before, but that’s the kind of shoe that fits.)
If, however, they choose to play silly Barzinis, then no punishment seems severe enough. Trump will remind them who is boss even if that means destroying the economy of the whole world, including the US.
That’s what he did, explaining that foreign countries had “ripped us off left and right, but now it’s our turn to do the ripping … I know what the hell I’m doing.” What he was doing in the full knowledge was wiping untold trillions off the world’s wealth in one fell swoop.
Trump proved his ability to turn people into millionaires, provided they were billionaires to begin with. He was also taking a sledgehammer to millions of nest eggs, and everyone ran scared, fearing that perhaps Trump didn’t really know what the hell he was doing.
With his characteristic flair for English, Trump branded them as “weak and stupid people” and coined his own neologism, “panicans”, because only weak and stupid people used the old word ‘panickers’.
When a loose cannon careers about, crushing everything in its way, then the best thing to do is get out of its way. But there was nowhere for those uppity foreigners to go, what with Musk’s project of mass emigration to Mars still being in design stage.
Hence foreign leaders had to reenact the opening sequence in The Godfather and offer Trump their respect in exchange for his protection.
Trump commented on that submission with his customary elegance: “These countries are calling me up, kissing my ass … they are dying to make a deal.” With the Pope, supplicants only have to kiss his ring, but then it’s Trump and not His Holiness who is truly infallible.
“Please, please, sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything,” is how Trump described their supplications. I don’t know whether he told them that one day he’d expect them to provide a service, but The Godfather ethos seems to demand that sort of thing.
His personal objective thus achieved, Trump must have cast a panoramic look at the world’s economy and found it lying in ruins. Having extracted from the economic primer every prerequisite for a global recession, possibly depression, he knew he really was top dog.
Now he had shown the world his true power, people were offering him proper rispetto. Actually, this was the sort of respect offered to a chap who pulls the safety pin out of a hand grenade on a crowded bus, but that didn’t matter to Trump.
Something else did though. His capi de regime were getting restless. You see, some of them, such as Musk, Bessent and a whole raft of major donors got caught in the crossfire.
Musk, for example, lost $8.7 billion as a direct result of Trump’s affection for tariffs, and he had been a loyal lieutenant. Bessent too suffered huge attrition, although, as a former hedge fund manager, he wouldn’t own up to the number of billions wiped off his books.
When Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade advisor, tried to tell those dissenters to shut up and follow the leader, all hell broke loose. Musk called Navarro “a moron” who is “dumber than a sack of bricks”. Leader, schmeader, that was serious business they were talking about, billions, for crying out loud.
That gave Trump a dilemma. Dropping his trousers to let foreigners pay their respects was one thing, but upsetting his nearest and dearest wasn’t on. What if they did a Tessio and switched sides?
An announcement followed that all tariffs above the ironclad 10 per cent were being suspended for 90 days. The markets and, more important, the wealth of his loyal servants, shot up, and Trumps capi di regime began to smile again. This, though Trump had declared just two days earlier that “my policies will never change”.
After that, Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, and indeed his Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, explained that had been the plan all along. Trump had staged that little demonstration of power to gain “leverage”. They didn’t explain what the leverage was for and whom it was against, leaving that to their listeners’ imagination.
Let me see if I understand. So the plan was to crash the world’s markets and, just as the world was bending down to pay its respects, to withdraw – well, suspend – most tariffs, putting the economic roller-coaster on a steep upswing. Do I get this right?
If I do, then let me draw your attention to a little fact. At 9.37 AM yesterday, when the markets had hit rock bottom, Trump posted that “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!” Why was it such a great time?
Buying low makes sense only if you confidently expect the market to climb up soon or at least eventually. Yet no one expected that, quite the opposite. Every economist, analyst and commentator was sure that, since Trump had declared that his policies would “never change”, the market was going to continue its accelerating downward slide.
Buying under such circumstances would have meant throwing good money after bad. Only one thing could have made yesterday a great time to buy: foreknowledge that the tariffs would be dropped the next day and the markets would surge in consequence.
And only one man, Trump himself, possessed such foreknowledge, which he could then vouchsafe to some of his loyal servants, such as Musk and Bessent. Did they follow that advice? And if so, how much did they make from such knowledge?
I wonder if Bessent and Leavitt realise what they said. They actually hinted at the possibility of market manipulation, an offence for which uncountable traders have been sent down for rather long stretches.
Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that’s what Trump did – only that it looks as if he might have done. The trick is as old as the hills: you find a way to depress the market, buy as long a position as your finances allow, then watch the market shoot up, sell and laugh all the way to the bank.
Have Tessio whacked, reward your loyal capi di regime, make everyone else pay their osculating respects… well, I don’t want to keep banging on about The Godfather. It’s just that the analogy refuses to go away.
A question, if I may. What happens after 90 days? Another roller-coaster ride? More people losing their pensions and more of Trump’s friends making a killing?
Let’s just say I wouldn’t be at all surprised if some of Trump’s lieutenants eventually got done for insider trading. But, I hasten to add, the Donald himself will have to remain above suspicion, like Caesar’s wife.