Despite all the threats and the bravado about not extending the 1 August deadline for his huge tariffs to take effect, at the very last minute Trump has given 70 countries another 7 days to capitulate and agree a 'deal'. His officials say this should not be seen as a “de facto” extension, although I'm not sure how else you would describe it. Mexico gets another 90-day ‘pause’ in tariffs being applied to its exports to America. The administration says the extra week is to give US Customs and Border Protection officers "sufficient time to fully implement these tariffs". I bet. It must be utter chaos in the customs department as they struggle to know from day to day, or even hour to hour, what rate to apply to which countries and which products.
Canada, one of America’s biggest trading partners, faces the new 35% tariff applied from today, presumably as punishment for Premier Mark Carney saying they will recognise the state of Palestine.
Trump is handling trade policy in the same way a homicidal maniac wields an axe.
The BBC quotes Dr Deborah Elms, head of trade policy at the Hinrich Foundation in Singapore, who says Trump is showing that decisions are ultimately in his hands and that he will act in surprising ways to get what he wants. For instance, Switzerland, which thought it had negotiated a more favourable deal with the US, was slammed with a higher 39% tariff rate - a sign of Trump's "individualised policy making", says Dr Elms.
No, it’s a sign he hasn’t got a clue.
Let’s face it, he’s a moron who has zero idea what he’s doing or why. World trade is being thrown into chaos and confusion according to the whim of a man with the brain power of an amoeba.
To give you an idea of how stupid all of this is, I think you’ll find this podcast and transcript between David Frum, a writer at The Atlantic magazine, and Douglas Irwin, who teaches at Dartmouth College and is said to be America’s leading expert on the country’s history of trade and tariffs, of interest.
Essentially, Trump is trying to solve a ‘problem’ that isn't very important and doesn’t actually exist anyway. He declared an ‘emergency’ allowing him to bring in these tariffs because of America’s huge trade deficit, but Irwin argues that the trade deficit doesn’t really matter anyway. He quotes a line he recalled from The Wall Street Journal's editorial page: “The best way to think about the trade deficit is not to think about it.”
Not only is it unimportant, but you can also find plenty of economists arguing that the trade deficit problem isn’t a problem at all. It doesn’t actually exist. Phillip Booth at The Centre for Markets, Enterprise and Ethics argues (HERE) that it makes good sense to import cheap T-shirts (for example) and export expensive, high-value technology like airliners (for example) because it pays better wages and makes Americans better off.
As he says, it would be ridiculous for Wall Street bankers to have to sit in front of sewing machines in a sweatshop earning 56 cents an hour to produce cheap clothing for their own domestic market.
"Free trade means that the US is able to produce goods and services that are more valuable than garments, export those goods and services and use the proceeds from selling its exports to buy garments. US consumers get cheaper goods from abroad and US producers are able to produce things of a higher value than garments. This is why the average income in the US is nearly 30 times that in Vietnam – it is not 56 cents an hour."
The USA has a massive national debt problem, but this is largely because successive governments, on both sides of the aisle and for years, have spent more than they're prepared to raise in taxes. This isn't due to the trade deficit, although Trump often confuses the two. In fact, the US economy has consistently grown faster than most other leading industrialised economies for decades. Globalization has been good for Americans.
Despite apparently being 'ripped off' for decades the average American enjoys a lifestyle most of the rest of the world can only dream about. It makes no sense.
Next, the tariffs that are being imposed won't solve the 'problem' in any case. As David Frum (a graduate from both Yale and Harvard, former speech writer for George W Bush, and presumably a Republican) explains:
The Trump tariff policy "won’t reverse the trade deficit. It won’t boost manufacturing. It won’t boost U.S. exports. It won’t check American imports. And it won’t balance China. All of those things will not happen."
So, not only is he trying to solve a non-existent crisis, the solution he is proposing won’t work anyway. And not only that, but the solution will damage the US economy. Frum again:
"First, we’re going to see slower economic growth. And that shows up in every economic model because everything that the Americans make that depends on inputs from the rest of the world, all of those things, those inputs become more expensive, and the goods become less competitive, and so you’re going to see a slowdown in growth.
"You’re going to see a slowdown in business investment, because the rules change all the time. Americans don’t know what to build, who to sell it to. They don’t know if they’ll have customers overseas for anything, and they don’t know whether foreigners will buy American goods, because the foreigners will be retaliated against.
"They’ll see a slowdown in business investment and a slowdown in growth."
This is how crazy it all is. Yet, this morning the BBC is devoting a rolling news feed about its impact across the world, without mentioning any of this.
It's not obvious to me that the US will ever get out of the rabbit hole Trump has led his countrymen down.
The Smithsonian
In a move that Orwell might have predicted, the once respected Smithsonian Museum has reportedly removed Trump’s name from the list of US presidents who have been impeached. This followed pressure from the White House.
Under pressure from the White House, Smithsonian removes Trump from impeachment exhibit at the National Museum of American History— Phil Lewis (@phillewis.bsky.social) 1 August 2025 at 02:28
Which reminded me of Orwell's quote from 1984:
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."
Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election
John Brennan and James Clapper, senior intelligence officials in the Obama administration, have hit back at the idea that they and others, including Barack Obama, somehow colluded to suggest Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Trump win, and that this collusion was specifically to damage Trump's political reputation.
Trump claims this amounted to 'treason' by Obama.
The pair have written a piece for the New York Times reminding us what the American intelligence community assessment revealed:
"The assessment found that President Vladimir Putin of Russia had ordered an influence campaign to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process and harm the electability and potential presidency of the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton.
"The assessment also found that the Russians had developed a “clear preference” for Mr. Trump and aspired to help his election prospects. It further stated that the Russians employed a variety of tactics as part of this campaign, including hacking into the email accounts of Democratic Party organizations and officials and publicly releasing the stolen data through digital allies."
The findings, they write, were validated by the "unanimous, bipartisan, five-volume report issued by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, whose Republican members at the time included Marco Rubio, now the secretary of state, and Senator Tom Cotton, now the committee chairman."
But have no doubt that Trump will also try to have this rewritten to absolve him and his campaign.
