Trump's tariffs: They’re not bait and switch, they’re bait and ditch

It’s a sunny day in April — a little cold perhaps, but cheerful and spring-like enough to bring forth hopeful dreams of beaches and umbrellas and colorful drinks in whacky containers shaped like coconuts. So, let’s celebrate by taking a trip down to Atlantic City, where Donald Trump honed his skills at financial three-card monte. Remember him bragging in an interview with the New York Times during his first campaign way back in 2016 when he was asked about the four bankruptcies his casinos went through before closing for good, “I took a lot of money out of the casinos with the financings and the things we do. Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time.”

Do you want to know how he managed to lose money running the only business in existence that has a guaranteed profit margin? With bluster and bullying and promises he failed to make good on and guaranteed deals he backed out of practically before they closed and unpaid bills and bonds and loans not worth the paper they were printed on. Do you know what he was doing as lawsuits flew and judgements came due and his casino empire, along with a sizeable portion of his Manhattan real estate nose-dived into the red? He was flying around at stockholder expense on company helicopters and jets and skipping board meetings and playing golf and calling Page Six of the New York Post to brag about how rich he was and how many people wanted to “do deals” with him.

On day 78 of the Trump Presidency Deux, does any of that sound familiar?

If there’s one thing Trump knows how to do, it’s to blow up a balloon of lies until it’s so gigantic that it blocks out the sun. He did it last Wednesday when he announced that he was imposing tariffs on the entire world, beginning with our largest, most important and friendliest trading partners, almost all of whom we already have free trade agreements with. He did it yesterday on Air Force One when asked by a reporter if his tariffs were just a negotiating stance from which he would be willing to “walk back,” Trump answered, “They can both be true. There can be permanent tariffs and there can also be negotiations.”

Here's what Trump did in Atlantic City. He got banks and Wall Street firms and individual investors and building contractors and other casino companies to loan him money and float his junk bonds and sign his contracts to the extent that he could overbuild hotels with too many rooms for the Atlantic City market, open casinos with too many gaming tables and slot machines for the number of gamblers willing to travel to the Jersey shore, especially after Pennsylvania legalized gambling and opened its first casino, and insulating himself by his willingness to be dragged into bankruptcy court where no less than four times, he shifted blame, took on more debt, stiff-armed desperate bond-holders and contractors to whom he was in debt, paying himself ever-larger salaries and bonuses for running his casinos and Trump hotels into the ditch, and claiming that the multi-billion dollar value of the Trump name would bail out the whole mess.

Trump’s modus operandi as a businessman could be summed up in the phrase he now uses to describe his disastrous tariffs and the cascade of losses in the stock market: both things are true. In Atlantic City, he was running a failing business, losing record amounts of money, and pocketing tens of millions of dollars every time he gave his investors and banks and bondholders more bad news. He was losing millions and getting richer by the day.

On the Big Stage of international trade, he's betting other people’s money – that would be our money this time -- on deals he has already said he will renege on. How do you rake in trillions in tariffs to fatten the federal coffers so you can cut taxes on your billionaire buddies if you’re going to cancel them almost before they are levied? The New York Times reported late today that Trump “said on social media that he had ‘a great call’ with South Korea’s acting president, Han Duck-soo, about trade and tariffs, and that South Korean officials were heading to the United States for talks.” As for China, on which he threatened tariffs of 104 percent if they went through with reciprocal tariffs of their own, Trump promised that the sun will shine when he decides to let the air out of his Rose Garden balloon: “China also wants to make a deal, badly, but they don’t know how to get it started,” Trump posted on Truth Social, yet another of his businesses he is fleecing for inflated salaries and bonuses as it loses millions. “We are waiting for their call. It will happen!”

So, will there be tariffs, or won’t there? Does he have an end game? European Union countries, all over Asia and South America, even the penguins must have entire floors of government buildings and acres of supercomputers running AI-enhanced predictive programs trying to puzzle that one out. Here’s a hint. Donald Trump will do what he's always done. He’ll let his policy go bankrupt after he has milked it for every nickel he can squeeze out of it. Do you think the “deal” for Tik-Tok that will “solve” trade with China might have a tasty little percentage that might sneak its way into some crypto entity set up by the Saudis or maybe the Chinese themselves that can be tapped down the line for the advantage of Trump Inc.? He’s counting condos and totaling up his crypto as he wanders into the rear of Air Force One to toss out threats and promises alike to awaiting media stenographers who will headline them straight to the audience he’s really going for -- Xi Jinping, Shri Narendra Modi, and all those ungrateful European leaders with insufficiently bended knees and inadequately pursed ring-kissing lips.

Will it matter that tariffs don’t turn out to be Trump’s advertised panacea for our economic ills? No more than it mattered that his casinos were until the day they closed in bankruptcy the “biggest and the best,” or that Trump Tower has only 58 stories and not the 68 claimed by The Donald, or that he has never laid eyes on E. Jean Carroll, the woman he sexually assaulted in a Bergdorf’s dressing room and to whom he owes millions in a court judgement he is busily dodging.

Trump will declare a big “win” when all the tariff dust settles. All our trade imbalances will magically evaporate. All those nasty countries that have taken advantage of us for so long will be our new best friends. Watch all the headlines in the MSM suddenly lose the word “tariff” and find the words “fair trade.” What will “fair trade” consist of? Anything Trump says, that’s what.

If you want to follow the real story of Trump’s tariffs, ignore the headlines and watch his crypto exchange and the valuation of its so-called “stablecoin,” USD1. He’s already made $550 million on another World Liberty cryptocurrency, WFLI. At the same time Trump has been imposing trade-strangling tariffs on everything from bras to beer, he has stripped the FTC and FEC of any ability they once pretended to have to regulate crypto currencies and exchanges, creating a wild west free market in those imaginary “investment vehicles.”

Follow the funny money and ask yourself this question: where are the tariffs on crypto?