Reality is Trump's babysitter
Andreas Cervenka
Reporter and economic commentator
This is a commentary text. Analysis and positions are those of the writer.
Published 2025-04-25 15.08
So it has happened once again - someone living in the real world tells Donald Trump about the consequences of his decision, which makes him back down.
That is, in the middle of the chaos, some kind of good news for the world.
But there is a big cloud of worry.
Do you want to make Trump change his mind? Make sure to be the last person to talk to him.
That was the headline in the Washington Post in the spring of 2017.
It was about Donald Trump showing a clear pattern – he adapted his opinions to the latest he had heard.
This is a well-known psychological phenomenon.
Behavioral scientists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky had people spin a wheel with the numbers 1 to 100.
Immediately afterwards, they asked questions like: what percentage of the UN member states are from Africa?
Those who had just gotten a high number on the wheel guessed a higher number than those who had gotten a low number. The wheel becomes a kind of mental "anchor", a reference point for our perception, even if it is completely irrational.
The fact that we humans are weak to this type of manipulation is something that Donald Trump himself has effectively exploited. Through various provocative statements, he has for years pushed the boundaries of what is considered normal.
At the same time, he seems to fall into the trap himself time and again.
At first, his advisers said that shock tariffs against the entire world were a good way to go.
Then his Treasury secretary declared that the market for US government securities was about to crash. Trump changed his mind.
Instead, he escalated the trade war with China. On Monday, he met with the heads of department store giants Walmart, Target and Home Depot, who declared that prices will rise and shelves will be empty if it continues.
Trump changed his mind and called for tariffs against China to be Lowered.
Last week, Donald Trump indicated that he wanted to get rid of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. The market panicked.
Then Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that it would be as smart as cutting off your foot to get rid of a sore toe. Trump changed his mind.
In recent weeks, American automakers have been telling the president that his tariffs risk crippling the industry.
What has happened since then? Trump has changed his mind.
That's how it's been for weeks. Trump barely has time to issue his ultimatums before he withdraws them.
There are seaweeds on the ocean floor that are more rigid.
How should this be interpreted? There is good news and bad news.
The good news is that reality matters. When the consequences of Donald Trump's ideas become concrete enough, such as a stock market crash, soaring interest rates or empty shelves in stores, and someone tells him so, he seems to listen after all.
It has also become clear that the trade war with China will cost.
Even Trump's friend Elon Musk was forced to admit that China's ban on rare earth metal exports is hindering his plans to build robots.
Anyone who draws up a list of products for which the United States is currently completely dependent on imports from China also realizes that this is a recipe for trouble.
The Atlantic magazine points out a group that will be hit particularly hard by the tariffs: American parents. 99 percent of all child car seats come from China, as do over 90 percent of all children's books and eight out of ten toys sold in the United States.
One can sense a coming mom and dad rebellion that does not bode well for the Republicans in the midterm elections.
This allows the rest of the world to breathe a little. If there is a kind of babysitter in the form of reality, it is also possible to rule out the very darkest scenarios for the economy, which after the first tariff game in early April appeared conceivable.
At the same time, China's position has paradoxically strengthened, even though the country is of course suffering economically, and there are report that they also want to see a slowdown.
China is already on the way to forging closer ties with the outside world, for example by increasing oil imports from Canada while at the same time restricting purchases from the United States and trying to buy soybeans from Brazil instead of from the United States.
Above all, China now knows that Trump is vulnerable to what is happening on the financial market. And that the real weak point is the interest rate on US government securities.
The bad news? That Trump, while he seems to be impressed by economic metrics, has shown no signs of backing down on issues where the costs are harder to measure in money. These include the attack on universities, the slaughter of American research, the deportation of people without legal process, the war on the media and the claims to other countries' territory, and the talk of remaining president after 2028.
A US that is moving in an authoritarian direction will prove to be a much bigger problem than a shortage of Chinese plastic toys.
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