How an Economic Covid Was Made in an American Factory

Game theory gone rogue? The Great Tariff War was born of a bad marriage between jingoistic alarmism and high finance. Even Trump backers aren't ruling out an economic nuclear winter

- SANTWANA BHATTACHARYA

Can there be a feminist reading of Donald J. Trump's tariff war against the whole universe? Yes indeed, and since nothing else has helped to clear the world's brain fog, here goes. Those who saw him up close describe Trump as a kind of blundering Hugh Hefner of politics. A raucous, all-American Alpha male dream playing in the highest office, with a blonde secretary always in tow, if not the "hundred women" of campaign lore. Outside of his own power trip, he's also a petulant, 78-year-old 'WhatsApp uncle' with woolly ideas about the world. Put the two together, and you can actually derive the phenomenon we have today. A comic-book despot who thinks the world is just another blonde.

Now for other readings. In November 2016, the German magazine Der Spiegel had greeted Trump's first appearance on the world stage with a very striking cover. It had the US president's face as a screaming meteor hurtling towards a peaceful Earth, his own blond mane blazing behind him like solar flares. 'Das Ende Der Welt (wie wir sie kennen),' said the words on the cover. The End of the World (As We Know It). It took nine years for that promise to be truly fulfilled. When the meteor hit, even the penguins of McDonald Islands were startled out of their peaceful Antarctic reverie. Yes, no humans live there, and that cluster of volcanic icicles have been slapped with a 10 percent tariff! Internet memes were soon showing a delegation of its black-coated avian elite waddling away to White House to plead mercy, while blue-collared penguin citizenry marched in protest.