When last I checked in on my favorite influencer of the right wing in this thread, Erick Erickson was lamenting the breakdown of American society. Today, he’s sighing over President Trump:
What makes [President Trump’s tariff decisions] particularly tragic is that the damage may outlast the tariffs themselves. Even if a future administration moves quickly to dismantle the policy, the economic disruption — broken supply chains, abandoned trade relationships, shuttered small businesses — will not simply reverse overnight. Trading partners who have spent years diversifying away from American markets will not rush back. Manufacturers who relocated or restructured to survive the tariff regime will not immediately undo those decisions. The economic scar tissue tends to linger long after the wound is closed.
There is also the matter of credibility. The United States built the post-war global trading order largely on the premise that American economic leadership was stable and predictable. Allies and adversaries alike now have fresh evidence that a single administration can upend decades of policy on a whim, and that the courts may not intervene swiftly enough to limit the damage. That credibility, once spent, is extraordinarily difficult to rebuild. Future administrations — Republican or Democrat — will pay that price at the negotiating table for years to come, and American businesses and workers will ultimately bear the cost.
Quite right. Reader, prepare yourself for diminishment. The ejection of the Republican pack of grifters, zealots, and folks marinated in incoherent ideologies doesn’t mean we’ll return to the top of the world; they are inflicting damage that, in many cases, cannot be erased.
The world will be different on the other side of the bridge.
