Japan seppuku'd its economy once at their master's command, but now even the must loyal vassals cannot hear their master's voice nor discern his plan. The Japan trade delegation walked out of the Oval Office, hat in hand. There is no deal to be had with America because there is no one to deal with. Trump is like a dog who caught a car. He doesn't know what the fuck to do with it.

When I'm being chased by dogs, I sometimes stop and ask, “what do you want? WTF do you want? have you thought this through?” Invariably, the dog doesn't know. And so I just keep going as the dog barks, receding into the distance. This is what the world is going to do with Trump, not because it doesn't want to negotiate, but because America itself doesn't have a clue.

As Robert E. Kelly, professor in occupied Korea, said, “A trade deal w/ a major economy is a complicated project; US deal w/ mid-sized economy S Korea took 17 months to work out. W/ Japan or EU, it will [be] even longer.” Even with states that already have a gun to their head, it still takes years to negotiate details. Trump now has to negotiate trade deals with 185 entities across the world, some of them populated only by penguins, because who the fuck made this spreadsheet?

Japan got a 50-minute meeting with the President, but such high-level meetings are supposed to be the end of a long process, not the beginning. Agreements are usually worked out long before the signatories sit down and so, predictably, Japan left with nothing but souvenirs and chagrin. Trump's team proudly says people are ‘calling for meetings’, but this isn't telemarketing for time-shares, there's no great value in gathering ‘leads’. These are people that were already doing business with you, until you stopped them. It's like me unplugging the Internet router and crowing that I'm suddenly really popular among my family.

Dutiful nations—which still fear liberation—are dolefully showing up for meetings without agendas and getting nothing because there's nothing to be had. As former Assistant Secretary of War Chas Freeman said, “the Japanese said 'well, what is it that you want?' And the Americans could not explain what they wanted.” Where do you go with this? It's like being held up by a guy with no coherent demands. What do you want? My wallet, my watch, directions? Talk to me man!

Guess Who

More to the point, nobody even knows who they're supposed to negotiate with. The President directly, his commerce secretary who spends more time on TV, is his son-in-law still around, should we buy his meme coin? Besides the lack of clarity on what America is saying, it's unclear what side of their mouth they're talking out of on any given day.

As Qian Jing of the Asia Society Policy Institute said, (via SCMP),

Chinese elites are finding the current US messaging a little "disorientating" due to "confusing" communication with the Trump 2.0 team, said Qian Jing, co-founder and managing director of the Centre for China Analysis at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

"For example, there have been about five different [private] channels in the past 10 days engaging with Chinese officials, and all seem to be somehow carrying different messages," Qian said during a panel discussion held by the Asia Society in Hong Kong on Tuesday.

Even within the White House, there's massive confusion as to who's doing what, and with what authority. Major decisions seem to depend on who's physically next to the Orange King at any given point, able to get him to post on social media. As the Wall Street Journal reported,

On April 9, financial markets were going haywire. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick wanted President Trump to put a pause on his aggressive global tariff plan. But there was a big obstacle: Peter Navarro...

So that morning, when Navarro was scheduled to meet with economic adviser Kevin Hassett in a different part of the White House, Bessent and Lutnick made their move, according to multiple people familiar with the intervention. They rushed to the Oval Office to see Trump and propose a pause on some of the tariffs—without Navarro there to argue or push back. They knew they had a tight window. The meeting with Bessent and Lutnick wasn’t on Trump’s schedule.

The two men convinced Trump of the strategy to pause some of the tariffs and to announce it immediately to calm the markets. They stayed until Trump tapped out a Truth Social post, which surprised Navarro, according to one of the people familiar with the episode. Bessent and press secretary Karoline Leavitt almost immediately went to the cameras outside the White House to make a public announcement.

This is like courtiers getting access to the king in the toilet, then rushing out with some proclamation before anyone else can trip them. I'd say things have degenerated, but Joe Biden invisibly quit the election over Twitter, the place has been going down the shitter for a while now.

In this shituation, proximity with the king is what matters, so all 185 affected territories need to negotiate with Trump directly, which is troubling because he little to no attention span for anything. As his blood-money ghostwriter Tony Schwartz has said,

Trump has been written about a thousand ways from Sunday, but this fundamental aspect of who he is doesn’t seem to be fully understood. It’s implicit in a lot of what people write, but it’s never explicit—or, at least, I haven’t seen it. And that is that it’s impossible to keep him focussed on any topic, other than his own self-aggrandizement, for more than a few minutes, and even then... If he had to be briefed on a crisis in the Situation Room, it’s impossible to imagine him paying attention over a long period of time.

How the fuck is this guy going to sustain trade negotiations over the months and years that's required? If only there was an organization for coordinating world trade, like a world trade organization or something. Nevermind. Trump hasn't blown up US trade policy to replace it with something, he's just blown it up for the insider trades we make along the way.

Bureaucracy

A politburo full of crazies like this just leads to complete bureaucrazy. Simpleton spreadsheets spread out into complex chaos. Can you imagine being a customs agent right now? You don't know the rules you're supposed to enforce from minute to minute. Are you supposed to listen to your boss, or watch TV for your boss's boss? The system simply isn't built to turn globally shipping on a dime like this. In fact, US Customs actually seized up and briefly stopped collected some tariffs at all. Trump said “We're making a fortune with tariffs. $2 billion a day. Do you believe it?” and the answer was “no,” resoundingly. As Business Insider reported,

Data from US Customs and Border Protections shows that the actual tariff revenue is just a small fraction of what Trump said it is. A spokesperson for CBP told Business Insider that the agency has so far collected $500 million from Trump's broad round of tariffs that went into place on April 5.

And in total, the agency said it has brought in $21 billion in tariff-related revenue through its enforcement of 15 presidential actions since Trump took office nearly three months ago. That works out to a little under $250 million a day over the 86 days since January 20.

It's not just the CBP's data that doesn't match up with Trump's numbers.

The Treasury Department's daily deposit totals for "Customs and Certain Excise Taxes" reported over the seven weekdays since April 5 averages out to $227 million per day. The department's month-to-date total as of Tuesday is around $2.3 billion and its year-to-date total for the fiscal year that started in October is about $55.5 billion.

As Jarred Varanelli, vice president of U.S. sales at logistics firm Savino Del Bene, told CNBC (via), “There has been some confusion on what President Trump has said in social media posts on when the tariff starts and what is written in the executive order. Social media posts are not law on the pause and increase in tariffs. With the constant changes to the regulations, all customs brokers in our industry have a difficult task ahead of them.”

That's putting it lightly. People don't realistically know what they're going to pay until they physically receive the goods. It's like Schrödinger's shipping container, you don't know if your business is dead or alive until you open it. In response to this wild uncertainty, DHL America has simply stopped importing any B2C goods worth more than $800, from anywhere at all. DHL simply cannot operate in this environment.

It's not even the amount of tariffs, it's the uncertainty that's gumming up the works. And it's not just DHL. US shipping is down across the board.

Overall US imports are down 64% and exports are down 30% (roughly matching the China drop). Even though Trump has backtracked and exempted a huge number of Chinese goods, the damage is done. If you ship something now, he's highly likely to change his mind while it's coming over. Rather than becoming the workshop of the world again (which requires inputs) America is just closing up shop with a sign that says ‘Gone Fishing.’ They're reeling countries into negotiate, but then throwing them back because they have no idea what to do with them.

This external collapse is reflected in internal trucking data also. Industry analyst (and cucked Trump voter) Craig Fuller reports that, “Based on trucking volume data, freight markets with large exposure to ag and oil/gas are doing well since the trade war started. Freight markets serving retail and manufacturing are struggling, with heavy manufacturing getting completely obliterated.” America is becoming what they ignorantly accused Russia of being, a subsistence gas station with nukes.

Trade Seizure

Trump tried to seize world trade, but instead he's just given his own economy a grand mal seizure. This is why the Chinese call him “川建国 (Chuan Jianguo) which literally means that he builds China with his self-defeating policies — [or] 懂王” (Dong Wang) which means “king of understanding”, a satirical take on his “know-it-all” persona.” As Miley Cyrus sang, “I came in like a wrecking ball, All I wanted was to break your walls, All you ever did was wreck me.”

You could say this drop in trade hurts China also, and it does, but China isn't simultaneously fighting everyone else on Earth. They also have the strategic depth of having a strategy at all. When China goes in for meetings they don't have to negotiate anything, they just say ‘shall we be normal?’ and people agree. Nobody wins in a trade war, as China has said repeatedly, but unlike America, they are not their own worst enemy.

American talking heads have talked about ‘uniting the world against China’ but they're talking out their asses while kissing Trump's pasty. ‘Uniting’ requires some level of organization, not just untying trade agreements and leaving a business card at the crime scene. America has just issued a ransom note with no coherent demands. They're just spitballing here. Trump's economic moron Stephen Miran offered a “few ideas”, which include 1) shut up and take it 2) let us make it 3) buy the guns to hold yourself up with 4) move to America 5) just send money.

I mean, OK, how much? Are countries supposed to trade with the US and then write them a check for the entire trade surplus, ie work for nothing? How do we even communicate capitulation, do we just bribe everyone in the privy council, and hope someone catches Trump in a good mood? Even if most of the world wanted to join America in a crusade against most of the world's top trading partner, who do they call? The President directly? And what do they do? Buy an F-16, shine his shoes? Nobody even knows, least of all the Americans. The Americans are rebels against the economic system they built, and rebels without a clue.

As the hero of The Dark Knight told the two-faced liberal he confused, “Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it, you know, I just do things.” Trump just does things. In this case, crashing multiple ships into America as a center of world trade to see where the pieces fall. So, honestly, shout-out to Abu Donald, destroying the Great Satan from within, pissing on the rug and chewing up furniture. I, for one, am here for it. Good dog.

I'm glad to see America burn largely because they're burning Gaza. I've adopted this fundraiser for Muhammad and his family there. If you're able, support them, a loan to God is surely an investment in you.