Trump's tariffs and timing the bounce

One of my internet buddies is horrified that Trump followed through with his threats to levy tariffs against Mexico, Canada and China.

"Doesn't he know that tariffs generate tariffs in return and destroy the economies of both countries?"

My parroting of the old bromide that the first rule of training a mule is to get its attention was not appreciated.

Part of me understands where my friend is coming from. The Smoots-Hawley Tariffs act of 1930 is credited with increasing the intensity of the Great Depression, increasing its duration and "exporting" the economic downturn to places like Germany (and indirectly) setting the stage for Hitler and the NAZI party.

Theoretically, Trump's tariffs are almost identical to the Nuclear Weapons policy of Mutually Assured Destruction.

If the way for Mexico and Canada to avoid mutually assured economic destruction is to stop enabling economic immigrants who want to violate US laws from passing through their countries, why is that a problem?

Somebody is profiting from the vast subversion of US law. Otherwise it would have been a minor issue that would have been dealt with before midnight of January 20th.

OK, I can see that some will say that Mexico and Canada are not compelled to follow US laws. But do they really want to go down the road of testing Trump's resolve?

On a different note

One can make a compelling case that if the events of 2020 had happened in 2017, the first year of Trump's first term, then he would have handily won reelection.

Few people remember that Ronald Reagan first term was marred by a brutal recession. I graduated in Engineering from Michigan State in 1981 and only 17% of the people in my major got jobs in Michigan. Fortunately for Reagan, it was very early in his first term and the economy was coming roaring back by 1984. The economy was doing OK and the momentum was in the right direction. The United States electorate cheerfully sent Reagan back for a second term.

From a strategic standpoint, it would not hurt Trump if he had a very sharp recession of short duration NOW. In fact, it would probably help his legacy because it would make MAGA very strong for 2028. I don't see the threat of his tariffs triggering such a recession to be a bug...it is more like a feature from the standpoint of timing the bounce.

You can say lots of negative things about Trump and his MAGA brain-trust but even their critics must admit that their organization is very effective at LEARNING and IMPLIMENTING those lessons.

Side-story about recessions

It is like a young man I know who owned a diesel, 4WD truck.  He could not afford to keep it running. It absorbed all of his discretionary money and it was still not reliable transportation. He was trapped by that truck.

His life was on-hold until he confronted the reality of the truck. It was a money-pit that would never offer him a positive return on his dollar invested. Shit happened and he was FORCED to sell his truck.

He dumped the truck and took his loss. He bought a beater, gas-powered car that got 30 mph and never looked back.

Sometimes you just have to let go.

Gazing into my crystal-ball, a S&P 500 could drop by 40% and it would only unwind the stock market back to October of 2022. That is NOT the end of the world, even if it dents some politicians stock portfolios.