Trump's in a trap, and it’s one he built himself — brick by tariffed brick. If he barrels ahead with the tariffs, he’ll drive the economy straight into a ditch and risk going down in history as Herbert Hoover with a spray tan. But if he tries to walk it back — maybe slaps a bow on some one-off deal and calls it “victory” — he guts the whole point of the tariffs: the fantasy that American factories will magically rise from the rust like some sort of industrial phoenix. His people have been banging the “no pain, no gain” drum like it’s gospel. So what happens when the pain kicks in and they start looking for the exit? If they flinch now, the whole tough-guy economic nationalism shtick crumbles.
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