Trump Is Causing a Certainty Crisis.

Trump's tariffs can't achieve any one of his stated policy goals, but they can paralyze the economy.

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If we set aside the contradictory stated policy objectives President Trump gives for starting his trade war, we quickly find that -- in addition to being unable to defy the Law of Non-Contradiction -- tariffs also can't achieve any one of the goals.

We'll look at manufacturing, since I keep running into pertinent facts on that matter.

First, we'll set aside a biggie: The U.S. produces nearly a fifth of the world's manufactured goods, although this part of its economy is less than an eighth of GDP, and it does so with only about one tenth of its workforce.

Manufacturing is far from dead here, and had been enjoying a resurgence. But let's game out Trump's tariffs anyway.

Andrew Prokop of Vox does this in a reasonably accessible way, explaining several ways that Trump's tariffs interfere with the goal of building more factories here:

1. The supply chain problem;
2. The workforce problem;
3. The confidence problem; and
4. The currency problem.

For my money, the worst of these by far is the third, because if it isn't already cutting off the investment needed for our economy, it is close to doing so soon, in spades:

If the US president set new high tariff levels and could guarantee that they were permanent, that could be very economically damaging, but at least businesses would be able to plan accordingly. Trump's chaotic policy rollout, and its reliance on poor-quality analysis, has only deepened uncertainty about market conditions in the US in the future. And if businesses feel uncertain -- and like Trump can and will throw their business model into chaos on a whim -- they're going to delay making big new investments in US-based manufacturing. [bold added]

See also Ayn Rand on non-objective law:

When men are caught in the trap of non-objective law, when their work, future and livelihood are at the mercy of a bureaucrat's whim, when they have no way of knowing what unknown "influence" will crack down on them for which unspecified offense, fear becomes their basic motive, if they remain in the industry at all -- and compromise, conformity, staleness, dullness, the dismal grayness of the middle-of-the-road are all that can be expected of them. Independent thinking does not submit to bureaucratic edicts, originality does not follow "public policies," integrity does not petition for a license, heroism is not fostered by fear, creative genius is not summoned forth at the point of a gun. [bold added]

Even if all of Trump's monkeying around were confined to just taxes, the damage even that has done to the ability of businessmen to plan ahead has been impressive.

The crisis comes not from the fact that businessmen don't want to work under Trump's policies or with his style of governing; it's that they can't.

I'll draw an interesting parallel from one last bit on manufacturing I encountered this morning. According to a poll:

"America would be better off if more people worked in manufacturing."

• 80% of Americans agree
• 20% disagree

"I would be better off if I worked in a factory."

• 25% of Americans agree
• 73% disagree
• 2% currently work in a factory

To the degree anyone still imagines Trump is good on the economy, they are failing to see things the way a businessman does in the same way that they like the idea of having more factories until they are asked if they want one of those cruddy jobs.

The situation Trump is creating for them might be summed up in a hypothetical poll question: Would you be more likely to make a large purchase if someone could make wild changes to your monthly expenses and seemed likely to do so often, and for little reason?

-- CAV