“My philosophy, Mr President, is that all foreigners are out to screw us and it’s our job to screw them first.” With these words, the #US Treasury Secretary convinced the President to deliver a colossal shock to the global economy. In the words of one of the President’s men, the objective was to trigger “a controlled disintegration of the world economy”.
No, those words were not spoken by members of President #Trump ’s team in advance of their “Liberation Day” tariff splurge. While the “foreigners are out to screw us” certainly has a Trumpian ring, it was uttered in the summer of 1971 by then Treasury Secretary John Connally, who succeeded in convincing his President to unleash the infamous #Nixon Shock a couple of days later.

Will Liberation Day transform the world?

^{Yanis Varoufakis (UnHerd)}