[fzeroracer]

I don't think there's a point in looking for a rationale. His mind is exceedingly addled and he's even less coherent than he was during his first term. Combined with delegating responsibility to a bunch of people high on various drugs constantly telling him to do X or Y or Z his policy is 'whoever talks to him first'.

[TylerE]

Important correction: It's whoever talked to him last. He has flipflopped (remember when THAT was enough to doom a political career?) on virtually every possible issue, most multiple times.

[pessimizer]

This is fantasy. The guy does endless interviews and explains why he's doing everything he's doing, at length, and negotiates in public. You can hate it, but if he's addled then Biden didn't even count as alive for his entire term.

The reason that he came out of the gate so hard is due to extensive planning, and he's the only person during your lifetime who was the president, had four years off to reflect on it, then became president again. He recorded weird little videos of all of his future policies a couple of years ago, and he's not deviating from them significantly.

He's the least confused guy in politics right now. Whether you like it is a different story, but I personally am thankful that the worst, covert elements of the government made an enemy of him in his first term. The obvious temptation when handed a dystopian nightmare of surveillance, censorship, front groups, fake science, and an infinite mandate to the executive from Congress would be to use them. Thank god Trump actually hates them personally, and is petty.

Economically, he's sincerely trying to keep the US from paying the piper for the trade deficit we've been running for 40 years. He obviously actually believes in this. It is also completely mainstream economic theory. I wish there was a political force that could oppose him on policy and say why things should be done a different way, but the "resistance" base is still announcing that the walls are closing in on orange Hitler any minute. Policy is like kryptonite to anti-Trumpers right now. They refuse to argue anything on the merits, because they all sound like Reagan Republicans when they do.

[AlecSchueler]

> The guy does endless interviews and explains why he's doing everything he's doing, at length, and negotiates in public.

So answer the question of why he wanted to bash Canada in the first place given the points made by the person asking?

[SpicyLemonZest]

> Economically, he's sincerely trying to keep the US from paying the piper for the trade deficit we've been running for 40 years. He obviously actually believes in this.

But this is not what Trump stated. The fact sheet he published on March 3 (https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/03/fact-sheet-pr...) doesn't mention anything about trade deficits; it says that the problem is cartel violence and fentanyl imports, and that the tariffs will remain only until "Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country".

(This is why, if you're curious, there's no political force that can oppose Trump on policy. Whenever anyone reads a Trump policy and develops an argument for why it's wrong, his lieutenants and supporters pop up to dunk on you for being so deranged as to think Trump was being serious.)

[kalleboo]

The most coherent explanation I've seen is that the only power the executive has to directly impose tariffs are from some "national security" law (intended for stuff like sanctions against war criminals), so even though he wants trade concessions, legally he has to dress it up as a national security issue.

That said, he doesn't seem to care about any other limits on the executive, and I don't even know how this strategy was meant to get the desired results (is he telling the other leaders his real requirements behind closed doors?)

[AlecSchueler]

If that's the case then OK but it contradicts the point being made that he explains everything he is doing in interviews and does all of his negotiations in public on the basis of what he claimed.

[SpicyLemonZest]

If he wants trade concessions, which I agree is plausible, delaying the tariffs on only USMCA-covered goods is a significant hint that there's real backchanneling going on. I was very surprised to learn there's so many non-USMCA-covered goods, and one way or another it's fair to presume Trump is intentionally drawing attention to that fact.

But the idea that Trump has deep strategic goals he's lying to the American people about is hardly a defense. And all the information that's leaked about negotiations thus far is that Mexico and Canada are just as confused as the general public about what Trump is asking for.

[card_zero]

What does "paying the piper for the trade deficit" mean? Fear of a service economy?

[archagon]

I feel like we're living in different realities. Whenever I try to watch Trump give a speech, I can hardly stomach more than a few minutes of it because the man seems incapable of stringing a coherent sentence together. (And no — despite his flaws, Biden did not talk like a four year old.) Outside of whatever executive orders the Project 2025 people dump on his desk, his public policy appears wildly aggressive and irrational, even to the point where leaders of neighboring countries are genuinely concerned about annexation[1]. And I'm not sure how you can claim with a straight face that the "dystopian nightmare of surveillance [and] censorship" isn't in effect with the DOJ threatening politicians for hosting webinars[2] and student visas being revoked via social media pattern matching[3]. (Just off the top of my head; there have been many other 1A transgressions over the past month.)

> Economically, he's sincerely trying to keep the US from paying the piper for the trade deficit we've been running for 40 years. He obviously actually believes in this.

Where is the evidence for this? "Obviously actually" are just weasel words. What's "obvious" to me over a decade of observation is that we have a pathological narcissist in power who cares (or thinks) little about anything other than himself and the things that directly enrich him. I seriously doubt he even knows what a trade deficit is.

(But yes, the people who prop up his signing hand certainly have a carefully constructed agenda, and they were never subtle about it.)

[1]: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/how-trumps-51st-st...

[2]: https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/02/28/congress/ao...

[3]: https://www.cnbctv18.com/world/us-deploys-ai-to-revoke-visas...