This is why you can't have business people running a country. A country is not like a business or a household.
[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/news/2024/08/can...
The United States on the other hand is planning a blanket tariff with certain carveouts, and the current administration seems to believe it will be foreign countries paying the United States as a result. When in reality, it will be American consumers and business owners paying 100% of the tariff costs. That is incompetence.
Canada's tariffs were to prop up their automotive industry. America's tariffs are to encourage nations to so more to stop importing illegal drugs into the US.
How does charging American consumers and businesses an additional 25-50% tax on purchases and imports accomplish that?
There aren't really domestic competitors for much of the imported materials used to create American products, so the foreign suppliers have the upper hand in the "deal" since Americans are reliant on them and do not have their own competitors in place.
To me this appears to be more about the federal government charging the majority of Americans more in taxes, to pay for the deficit being created by tax cuts for the few ultrawealthy Americans.
Musk is particularly dark—he was born in South Africa. He knows how this winds up. Yet he seems adamant to recapitulate the ANC’s corrupt playbook.
That's not a rationalist trade policy. At its most charitable, it's a failed attempted at brinksmanship. More likely it's just not understanding how markets work and in particular how that is reflected in the stock market (which, if not "rationalist" per se, is a lot more so than the administration). Incompetence either way.