This ongoing DOGE/Tariff fiasco that we're living through provides a perfect example of the chaos Trump brings as he tries to improve things.
"We need to streamline government, cut some costs and make it more efficient".
Well hallelujah. Absolutely. Finally. Here's our chance. No doubt there's a shitload of waste in our federal spending and it's past fucking time that we identify it. Fraud and abuse? Certainly. So let's do a careful, standardized audit, analyze the results, make a solid plan, execute the plan, monitor the results, tweak as needed.
What happens? Elon Musk and his crew are unleashed, Elon is waving around a fucking chainsaw on a stage, he's firing people all over the place, having to re-hire some of them back, making huge cuts in important services without always knowing how that service even fucking WORKS, and total chaos ensues.
"We need to make our trade agreements more reasonable and fair to America".
Fantastic. No shit. We should ALWAYS review our trade agreements and global trade tactics to confirm that tariffs are used as they should be -- to mitigate dangerous trade imbalances that can cause significant harm to the economies of key countries around the world, avoiding a domino effect globally.
What happens? We COMPLETELY over-correct, not only throwing global markets into a fucking tizzy, not only DESTROYING valued partnerships and relationships around the world with threats and intimidation, but the resulting chaos causes our most important security -- Treasuries -- to collapse and damn near bring the global fixed income market crashing down with them.
Does anyone sense a trend?
Trump sees a problem and doesn't understand that America isn't a small, family-operated business that he can twist and turn on a whim. What America does has global ramifications that can come back and bite us square in the ass, and he clearly doesn't understand that. His erratic actions threaten to make a bigger problem than the problem he is trying to solve.
Investing legend Ray Dalio put it best: "I agree with the problem. I am very concerned about the solution."
