Lipstick on a Pig

Tariffs, Ukraine, Budget &tc.

Dear Friends,

Welcome to The Quarter Inch, a mid-week roundup on current events.

Let’s start here:

The funny thing about this chart is that usually this kind of thing is deeply misleading, leaving out all sorts of extenuating circumstances. I mean, did a really, really bad jobs report come out? Are there underlying recession fears? Did the Fed tinker radically with the money supply?

Nope. This chart is hilarious precisely because of its 100%, spot-on accuracy. There is one factor—and only one factor—accounting for the divergence between these two lines: Donald J. Trump being an incandescent idiot and there not being, in this second term, any adult who can restrain him. Watching the actual adults go along with this man-child’s obsession with “tariffs are really good, actually,” and “you’ll be so rich you won’t know what to do with the money” and “American workers will thank me, eventually” is frankly one of the most embarrassing things I can remember in public life. Watching Howard Lutnick and Scott Bessent and other knowledgable people try to put lipstick on this pig is revolting. I cannot imagine enduring this kind of personal and professional humiliation in the quest for … what, exactly?

But nothing can persuade the TrueBelievers™ that Trump isn’t a genius. Here’s a Newsmax host:

Yeah. Let’s go with that. Trump is “undoing a globalist economic agenda that has decimated American wages and quality of life.” You’ll thank him someday for the hollowing out of [checks notes] your retirement portfolio.

And don’t you question it! Here’s White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt:

Yikes, it is so embarrassing. I thought it couldn’t get any worse than Karine Jean-Pierre. Silly me.

This is what you get when you decide that your trade policy roughly goes like this: 25% on Canada on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and the second Tuesday of every other month, but only on items not covered by our previous trade agreement; Tuesdays and Thursdays it’ll be 25% on everything; No, wait: pause that for thirty days—oh, no, never mind. 25% on Mexico starting next month, but pause it for another thirty days—no, let’s do it now. You get the drift. Economies need, above all else, a clear rule of law and stability. I’m starting to see how Donald Trump was capable of bankrupting … casinos.

So much winning.