President Donald Trump’s enemies have never understood him, and the same goes for some of his erstwhile-yet-lukewarm supporters.
For instance, those who have made fortunes in markets, confident that the value of their paper assets will continued to climb over the long term no matter what they do, and deriving that confidence in part from the fact that the federal government has bailed them out in the past, will never understand that the twin pillars of Trump’s statecraft — an America-first tariff policy and a commitment to destroying the deep state — explain precisely why millions of ordinary Americans who placed their faith in the president will continue to support him through hell if necessary.
According to the Associated Press, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday that the tariff policy he began implementing on Wednesday — “Liberation Day,” the president called it — has already paid dividends, as leaders from around the world have approached the president “dying to make a deal.”
The total number of nations hoping to reach an agreement on tariffs exceeded 50, per the AP.
“I spoke to a lot of leaders, European, Asian, from all over the world,” Trump told reporters. “They’re dying to make a deal. And I said, we’re not going to have deficits with your country. We’re not going to do that, because to me a deficit is a loss. We’re going to have surpluses or, at worst, going to be breaking even.”
The president, of course, will drive a hard bargain. He always has.
In fact, his “Art of the Deal” approach to negotiations has always involved demanding more than what he thinks he can get, settling for everything he deems essential, and then congratulating his negotiating partner on having struck a good deal. He will get what he wants from those nations because they have no leverage. The entire system of trade has worked in their favor for decades. Trump has nothing to lose.
Make no mistake, however, for the president has not adopted tariffs merely as a negotiating tool. He plans nothing short of a revolution.
To illustrate, consider conservative commentator and America-first icon Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Will Trump’s plan work to supercharge the economy?
The Trump administration, Bessent said, did not welcome skittish markets in decline over fears of the president’s tariffs. But the administration would pay that short-term price, and the Treasury Secretary explained why.
“I’m not happy with what’s going on in the market today,” Bessent told Carlson. “But the distribution of equities across households — the top ten percent of Americans own 88 percent of equities, 88 percent of the stock market. The next 40 percent owns 12 percent of the stock market.”
For those indifferent to math, that means exactly what Bessent suggested. Half of Americans own all of the equities in the stock market.
“The bottom 50 [percent] has debt,” Bessent continued. “They have credit card bills. They rent their homes. They have auto loans, and we’ve got to give them some relief.”
The Treasury Secretary then started to mention another statistic, but his excited interviewer interrupted him.
“That’s the message right there,” Carlson said. “Just as a bystander I’m like, ‘Wow. OK.’”
In his interview with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, THIS FACT made Tucker Carlson pause and say, “That’s the message right there. Just as a bystander I’m like, wow, okay.”
This is what Sec. Bessent described to Tucker:
“The good news is we have President Trump’s previous… pic.twitter.com/B8UkE140lY
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) April 6, 2025
Indeed, the kind of people complaining about Trump’s tariffs have never seen the world through the eyes of American workers.
For instance, in August the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that it had exaggerated job creation under President Joe Biden’s administration by more than 800,000 jobs between March 2023 and March 2024.
Not to worry, though, a Goldman Sachs economist proclaimed. After all, the new BLS job forecast likely suffered from a methodology that undercounted jobs worked by illegal immigrants by 400,000-600,000, which meant that the overall economy actually looked fine.
Likewise, multi-billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who supported Trump on issues such as DEI and the pro-Palestinian radicalism that plagued campuses at the height of the Israel-Hamas War, has denounced the president’s tariffs, even suggesting on the social media platform X that one member of Trump’s administration may have tanked the market on purpose so as to further enrich himself and his friends.
I just figured out why @howardlutnick is indifferent to the stock market and the economy crashing. He and Cantor are long bonds. He profits when our economy implodes.
It’s a bad idea to pick a Secretary of Commerce whose firm is levered long fixed income. It’s an irreconcilable…
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) April 7, 2025
Meanwhile, former Democratic fundraiser Evan Barker reposted Ackman, adding a perceptive comment.
“This whole situation is going to reveal who is on the side of the American worker and who is not,” Barker wrote.
This whole situation is going to reveal who is on the side of the American worker and who is not https://t.co/CB42iN3dVD
— Evan Barker (@evanwch) April 7, 2025
Indeed, we have arrived at that precise moment.
Those who imagined that Trump would stop at destroying DEI and lowering egg prices have experienced a shock. But those who have followed him for years knew these tariffs were coming and, in fact, voted for them.
Every source of oppression, from the deep state to the paper-wealth class, must face its reckoning. Americans can no longer tolerate a system in which their wealth flows into one of two places, either overseas via trade deficits or into the nation’s capital, whose suburbs make up four of America’s six wealthiest counties.
In short, nations will make deals, Americans will prosper, and the president will press forward. The righteous rage of millions did not call the Trump phenomenon into existence only to settle for tweaks to the system.
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