Donald Quixote and the stock market meltdown

Richard Hall examines the US president’s failed tariff gamble

- Richard Hall

Donald Trump has made an art form of selling his failures as triumphs, and this week's capitulation on tariffs was his Mona Lisa.

The president promised his tax on the world would herald a new golden age for American manufacturing - wealth, jobs, industry roaring back to life, a middle class reinvigorated and sprinting toward gleaming factories in hard hats, prosperity for Main Street, not Wall Street.

But just seven days and one stock market crisis later, he was forced to abandon those plans, and Main Street, too.

That much was evident when, in the hours after he climbed down from his tariff gambit, Trump gathered with a small group of billionaires in the Oval Office to boast about all the money they had made.

“He made $2.5bn today, and he made $900m. That’s not bad,” said Trump, gleefully, as Americans across the country were still counting the cost of the adventure to their retirement savings.

The story of the last week is a relatively simple one. An illthought-out economic plan from the most powerful man in the world was roundly rejected by global capital, and the president was forced into a humiliating retreat.

The White House wanted to tell a different story. What followed was a propaganda effort that some have described as Orwellian but in truth belongs to Cervantes.

In this telling, Donald Quixote bravely rode into battle against his enemies in the global financial market, cutting down giants with his sword and returning with glory and treasure. This time, however, there was no Sancho Panza around to tell him the giants were only windmills.

“Many of you in the media clearly missed The Art of the Deal,” said press secretary Karoline Leavitt, incredulously, shortly after the climbdown. “You clearly failed to see what President Trump is doing here.”