As costs of Trump’s chaos become clear, expect him to shift the blame

Perhaps this is a good moment for an audit of US President Donald Trump and his “Make America Great Again” (Maga) acolytes’ efforts to reshape the world as we have known it for over seven decades. That means reviewing the 130-or-so days since his inauguration, during which he has seeded the storm, and looking towards the 500-or-so days up to next year’s US midterm elections, during which he is set to reap the whirlwind.

One clear certainty is that we face a period of unrelenting uncertainty, some deliberately provoked, but most of it the unintended product of mouth before brain. How much harm this will do, and whether Trump’s team will succeed in “blame-shifting” its way out of electoral responsibility, has yet to be revealed. But the auguries don’t look good.

Using more than 150 executive orders over the four months since his inauguration, Trump has successfully marginalised Congress, made “ad hoc-ism” an art form and stirred a hornet’s nest of conflicts with friends and foes alike.

There is barely any area of policy that has not been scorched by one firestorm or another. At home, the administration has attacked “activist” courts, “antisemitic” universities and their foreign students, “unelected bureaucrats” working in federal agencies and any multinational company reluctant to bring its operations home. Abroad, Trump has threatened Greenland, Canada, Panama, the European Union, the United Nations and other multilateral organisations.

Trump’s Maga loyalists remain convinced that the damage caused will be short-lived. The technocratic consensus does not share that conviction, but as Trump’s procrastination, reversals and pauses generate considerable distance between cause and effect, he will no doubt try to shift the blame for inevitable harm elsewhere.

The most dramatic controversy is over the tariffs that Trump is using to punish the world for “ripping off” the US over recent decades. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Trump still seems convinced that “trade wars are good, and easy to win”.

  

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