First, he raises tariffs. Then he drops them. He halts grants. Then a judge reinstates them. He fires federal workers and then they get rehired. If you feel like you’ve got an acute case of whiplash after the first few months of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, you are not alone.
The obvious upshot of these frantic reversals is costly and dangerous uncertainty. Decision-making is difficult when some basic rules of American life seem always in flux.
But the deeper implication of this frenzied approach is not uncertainty. It is a widespread and dawning recognition of vulnerability.
