How many days will it take before Trump changes his min

Donald Trump

Trump's tariff threat the worst yet - luckily he will back down

Andreas Cervenka

Reporter and economic commentator

This is a commentary text. Analysis and positions are the writer's.

Updated 22.52 | Published 21.57

US President Donald Trump. Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

A superpower on the verge of collapse that investors are fleeing. The headlines about the US economy have not been fun in the past week.

It is easy to understand that Trump would like to change the subject with a new statement about shock tariffs against the EU.

How many days will it take before he changes his mind this time?

It is said that Donald Trump is not particularly keen on showing up to the office in the morning. According to a plethora of books and reports published about his last term, he liked to stroll into the Oval Office only in the early morning, around 11 o'clock. By then, however, he had been awake for several hours - watching TV and posting things on social media.

Just before 6 o'clock on Friday morning, Washington time, Donald Trump took to Truth Social and talked about a prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine. An hour later, a post about the trade agreement with Britain with a suggestion that the country should drill for more oil instead of investing in wind power.

At 07.19 local time, it was time for some groundbreaking news: Apple will be forced to pay 25 percent tariffs on all iPhones manufactured outside the US and sold in the country. Completely US-made phones are an impossibility in the foreseeable future, and if it were possible, it would drive up the price per phone to several times its current level. But who cares about the details?

At 07.43, Trump's post came that the talks between the US and the EU are not going anywhere and that 50 percent tariffs on European exports to the US will therefore be introduced as early as next week, on June 1.

THis is significantly higher than the 20 percent announced on April 2, i.e. the tariffs that were then paused just a week later.

Is this a decision that has been carefully considered and considered according to all the rules of the art, or just impulses from the world's most powerful man who slept badly?

No outsider knows. But it is possible to guess.

Trump is under pressure. The budget "The Big Beautiful Bill", which was voted through in the House of Representatives yesterday, has been followed by increasingly gloomy headlines about the future financial health of the US.

The financial world loves its abbreviations and the new favorite is ABUSA - Anywhere but USA.

There have been several signals this week that foreign investors have become more skeptical about owning American assets in general and government securities in particular.

The budget will cause the already rapidly growing national debt to rise even faster.

Interest expenses on the debt, at $880 billion last year, are already higher than the defense budget.

As economic historian Niall Ferguson tells the Financial Times: a great power that spends more on interest than on defense runs the risk of no longer being a great power.

With his tariff game, Trump is probably trying to both turn attention elsewhere and put pressure on the EU.

If the tariffs are implemented, it would be a hard blow to Europe, and would also hit Sweden. The US is the EU's largest trading partner and accounts for 20 percent of exports, where pharmaceuticals and various types of engineering products weigh heavily.

For Sweden, the US is the third largest export market with a share of 9 percent. Volvo cars and pharmaceuticals are two major goods shipped west.

50 percent tariffs could trigger a recession in Europe, according to economists.

But the US would also be affected, in the form of higher prices. If  China mostly exports consumer products to the US, the EU supplies a lot of machinery and input goods to American industry. If Trump wants to promote manufacturing at home, this is not so smart. Inflation is the last thing the US needs right now.

It doesn't look like a successful maneuver as a negotiating tactic either. Trump has already shown his cards.

Every step forward has been quickly followed by a step back. "Liberation Day" lasted seven days.

This was followed by a cockfight with China that was also over almost as quickly as it began, taking only a month.

Then Trump backed down without China actually making any concessions.

This calmed the market - concerns about an American recession diminished. The stock market rose and recovered from the decline since April.

Now it's time again.

The stock markets fell on Friday, but not nearly as much as in April. Something has happened.

Most people are simply counting on Trump to back down again, as he usually does. There is an abbreviation for this too – TACO - Trump Always Chickens Out.

That a grumpy old man can hold the whole world hostage with a few posts on Truth Social is almost comical if it weren't for the fact that it's also unpleasant.

But above all, it's starting to become something else: quite tiring.

The EU leader just needs to wait until one of Trump's friends in the business world tells him that this move is also stupid (although perhaps not in those exact words) and there will be new messages from the White House. Europe's politicians can use that in the negotiations.

Behind the angry emperor's back, more and more people are starting to roll their eyes and make faces.

The last person to realize this is Donald Trump himself.