People are focusing on the tariffs as economic policy. That’s a mistake. They have nothing to do with revenue generation or economic policy. Like the EOs on law firms they are a way to break civil society by making companies need a favor from Trump. Trump can grant exclusions to tariffs. He did that frequently in his first term. As with the law firms, the goal here is to threaten the profitability of powerful independent actors and make them beg for a deal from Trump. How do they get an exclusion? By showing or persuasively promising absolute loyalty to Trump. Watch as it plays out. If on either the EOs or the tariffs you get sucked in by the superficial aspects you are missing the point. Having broken Congress and making our representatives’ oaths to the Constitution meaningless, one by one he is breaking the big universities, the big law firms, and now the big multinational corporations to his will. It’s not that he is an idiot who fails to understand academic research, the role of lawyers in our society, or trade policy. He is a would be dictator who has studied the playbook of successful dictators and is systematically bringing to heel the powerful institutions that could oppose him.[/excerpt]