This is an adapted excerpt from the March 13 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
The president of the United States, the man with the nuclear codes, is angry, emotional and acting erratically. That’s not my judgment — it’s basically what his own Cabinet defenders are saying.
On Thursday, Donald Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick joined Bloomberg Television to talk about how the president is shocked that the trade war he launched against America’s closest allies, Canada and the European Union, is suddenly blowing up in his face.
All of this is happening for literally no reason whatsoever other than the fact Trump is picking a fight with our neighbors.
“The president was totally annoyed that the Europeans did this,” Lutnick said. “He cares about America, and he wants to take care of Americans. And why are Europeans picking on Kentucky bourbon, Harley-Davidson motorcycles?” When Lutnick was asked if this was an “emotional response” from the president, he called the E.U.’s move “disrespectful.”
“He wants these countries to respect him, and all of this showed you is that Europe and Canada do not respect Donald Trump,” Lutnick added. “If you make him unhappy, he responds unhappy.”
On Wall Street, stocks continue to fall amid fears of higher prices from Trump’s tariffs and threats. The S&P 500 fell 10% below its all-time high on Thursday, raising concerns among investors that a sell-off might be happening soon. The Nasdaq is already in that worrying territory. The Dow Jones was on track for its worst week since that string of high-profile bank failures in 2023.
All of this is happening for literally no reason whatsoever, other than the fact Trump is picking a fight with our neighbors. Now that our neighbors are fighting back, Trump is big mad, throwing out new threats of massive tariffs and annexation of foreign territories.
In a vicious cycle of escalation, Canada and the E.U. responded to Trump’s tariffs by imposing new taxes on U.S. exports, including on signature American products like, as Lutnick mentioned, whiskey and motorcycles. When Trump heard about that retaliation, he basically lost it and made an unhinged post on Truth Social:
The European Union, one of the most hostile and abusive taxing and tariffing authorities in the World, which was formed for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the United States, has just put a nasty 50% Tariff on Whisky. If this Tariff is not removed immediately, the U.S. will shortly place a 200% Tariff on all WINES, CHAMPAGNES, & ALCOHOLIC PRODUCTS COMING OUT OF FRANCE AND OTHER E.U. REPRESENTED COUNTRIES. This will be great for the Wine and Champagne businesses in the U.S.
Now, to be clear, the U.S. does not technically have any Champagne businesses, but we are the biggest market for Champagne and many other French wines. Trump is threatening a tax at such a high level that the price of a bottle of wine would essentially double for Americans. Everybody who understands trade understands this is insane. I think even people who don’t understand trade understand this is insane.
It was a point that even Emma Tucker, the editor-in-chief of the right-leaning Wall Street Journal, made on Thursday. “[The] mood has shifted pretty much since all the tariffs started coming in,” Tucker said on Fox Business. “I think businesses realize now Trump is serious about this, but the problem they’ve got is that they’re being imposed in a very haphazard way, and that’s creating so much instability.” When asked if companies would pass costs on to consumers, Tucker said “eventually they’re gonna have to.”
An hour after that interview, Trump posted to Truth Social again:
The Globalist Wall Street Journal has no idea what they are doing or saying. They are owned by the polluted thinking of the European Union, which was formed for the primary purpose of ‘screwing’ the United States of America. Their (WSJ!) thinking is antiquated and weak, and very bad for the USA.
Later in the White House, sitting next to the secretary-general of NATO, Trump took a question about his tariffs and started musing, yet again, about the territorial conquest of Canada, a fellow NATO member. Trump also talked about annexing Greenland from Denmark.
All in all, the American president spent his day annoyed and emotional about the trade war he started, and then obsessed some more about making Canada and Greenland part of America. All while CEOs, investors and regular people are absolutely freaking out about the economy.
And it looks like no one is going to stop him — at least, certainly not Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who tried and failed to put a positive spin on this unfolding economic disaster. During an interview on CNBC on Thursday, Bessent said the Trump administration was “focused on the real economy.”
“I’m not concerned about a little bit of volatility over three weeks,” Bessent said. “The reason stocks are a safe and great investment is because you’re looking over the long term. If you start looking at micro-horizons, stocks become very risky.”
It’s gotten so bad that even Tesla, the electric car company owned by Trump’s unelected co-president Elon Musk, is worried about the impact of tariffs on its bottom line. In an unsigned letter, the company warned Trump’s trade representatives that the president’s trade war would make it more expensive to build cars in America.
One person familiar with the process of sending the letter told the Financial Times: “It’s a polite way to say that the bipolar tariff regime is screwing over Tesla.” The person added: “It is unsigned because nobody at the company wants to be fired for sending it.”