"Most important of all, if and when a massive tariff barrier goes up along the US-Canadian border tomorrow — in the time it’s taken me to start and finish writing this, Trump has already announced a one month pause on the tariffs against Mexico — the official organs of American business will be apoplectic and the pain will be felt by US consumers almost immediately. (To digress from the main point here for just a moment, I think it’s worth registering that no one really knows what’s going to happen tomorrow or how economically disruptive the impact of a suddenly-imposed massive trade barrier between Canada and the US will actually be.)

Little, and perhaps nothing, in the behaviour of Trumpism to date has suggested it has either the ideological coherence or political discipline to weather such a storm. True enough, Trump is happy to foster chaos and cause radical disruption — look no further than his current assault on key institutions of the US federal government. But such disruptions have tended to have the support of corporate America or, at any rate, not flown directly in the face of its interests.

In such a volatile atmosphere, it’s anyone’s guess what exactly will happen in the coming days and weeks. When the dust settles, perhaps selective tariffs will remain in place for strategically-chosen industries (or something in that vein). But my instinct is that Trump will initiate some sort of climbdown in fairly short order, likely proclaiming — regardless of what actually occurs — that his objectives have been achieved (I wouldn’t even discount the possibility of Trump pausing the tariffs he’s threatened to impose on Canada before day’s end). The effect of his tariffs on the import-dependent US economy will be profound, and compounded by the impact of retaliatory tariffs planned by Canada, China, and in due course possibly Mexico and Europe as well."

https://www.lukewsavage.com/p/trumps-trade-war-will-be-maga-economics

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