February 9, 2025
Trump promised excitement. Here it is.
One of the problems with populists — with Trump-style populists but also with Comrade Muppet and the rest of those ghastly knuckle-draggers on the left — is that they are anti-institutionalists. Show them a NAFTA and they want to set it on fire, show them a Federal Reserve System and they’ll wonder why it can’t stand on its head or ride a unicycle.
One of the problems with populists — with Trump-style populists but also with Comrade Muppet and the rest of those ghastly knuckle-draggers on the left — is that they are anti-institutionalists. Show them a NAFTA and they want to set it on fire, show them a Federal Reserve System and they’ll wonder why it can’t stand on its head or ride a unicycle.

“Who is our bigger enemy,” President Trump asked, “Jay Powell or Chairman Xi?”

What if I told you it was . . . [dramatic pause] . . . neither?

(First, a little rhetorical criticism: It would have been a better tweet if he had written “Chairman Powell or Chairman Xi,” for the parallelism.)

Jay Powell is the chairman of the Federal Reserve. He was put there by Donald Trump, a notable social-media figure who serves as president of these United States in his spare time. Xi Jinping is the Communist boss in China. He’s the guy on the other side of that “great, and easy to win!” trade war that Trump has started, which could end up inducing a presidency-ending recession. Trump has miscalculated badly vis-à-vis China, and he wants the Fed to bail him out, but the Fed’s mandate is dual rather than triune: It is to work toward price stability and low unemployment, not price stability, low unemployment, and Donald J. Trump’s political convenience.

China is not our enemy, and it is a mistake to think of China as our enemy. China is our rival. You do not have normal diplomatic relations with an enemy. China certainly is a potential enemy, and our military and intelligence operations do well to keep that possibility in mind. But we are not at war with China. We are in a destructive tit-for-tat contest of tariffs and trade barriers, which already are leaving both countries economically worse off. Their difference is that a recession in the United States might mean President Elizabeth Warren, whereas a real economic disturbance in China could mean blood in the streets — and not just in the so-called People’s Republic.

[…]

See Also:

(1) Out of Order

(2) A Slow News Month for Trump

(3) 1619 or 1776: Which Defined America

(4) Hasbro Has a New ‘Monopoly: Socialism’ Game and Socialists Are Not Happy

(5) A Federal Court Strikes a Powerful Blow for Free Speech and Religious Freedom