The administration is still lavishing Americans with visions of a golden age to come. Yet in the course of a madcap week – which saw a flurry of tariffs and reversals, sparking a global trade war and a sharp stock-market decline – the tone changed a bit.
“There’ll be a little disturbance, but we’re OK with that,” Trump told Congress on Tuesday, defending his plans to throw up a protectionist barrier around the US with the biggest tariff increases in almost a century. By Friday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was arguing that the world’s biggest economy needed some “detox” to wean it off dependence on public spending.
Pivoting? I call bullshit. They have been saying this the entire time.