America is living in tariff limbo

For millions of people, any one of the many unprecedented actions in the first 100 days of the second Trump presidency was enough to show that the US is barreling toward - or has already arrived at - billionaire-helmed fascism. Sure, Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has indiscriminately fired thousands of federal employees and gutted the parts of the federal government that protect everyday people. And elsewhere, government funds are being spent on arresting immigrants with no criminal record and sending them to languish in prisons abroad; college students are being disappeared for their opinions on Palestine. But what really seems to have triggered Americans all across the political spectrum is Trump's plan to levy steep tariffs on just about every country on Earth, and the resulting economic instability. When the stock market lost around $10 trillion in value over the course of a few days earlier in April following the announcement, even Trump's loudest boosters started to worry.

Trump's tariffs are not trade policy as much as they are a fishing expedition: What can he extract from trade partners and from US companies that can be spun as a win for him? Ea …

Read the full story at The Verge.