Trump's Ego Drives Him to "Win"
Friday, April 11, 2025
This NYTimes article by Jamelle Bouie, The Tariff Saga Is About One Thing does a great job of surmising who Trump is: a mad President who has a compulsion to “win”, at least as far as he understands winning to mean.
This is a gift link, so you will be able to read the whole thing, but some excellent quotes include:
For as much as the president’s apologists would like us to believe otherwise, Trump’s tariffs are not a policy as we traditionally understand it. What they are is an instantiation of his psyche: a concrete expression of his zero-sum worldview.
The fundamental truth of Donald Trump is that he apparently cannot conceive of any relationship between individuals, peoples or states as anything other than a status game, a competition for dominance.
This simple fact of the president’s psychology does more to explain his antipathy to international trade and enthusiasm for tariffs and other trade barriers than any theorizing about his intentions or overall vision. It certainly is not as if he has a considered view of the global economy. It is not even clear that Trump knows what a tariff is.
Trump’s desire to dominate others is the driving psychological force of his administration.
The sooner we are rid of this monstrous person%2C the better the entire world will be.
But it’s going to take a long time to reverse the damage; if it even can be. I just hope this isn’t the direction of new world orders.