Joan Westenberg –

If you had told me a decade ago that a former president would waltz back into the White House, torch the global economy, slap double-digit tariffs on damn near everything, spook the markets into evaporating over three trillion dollars in a single day, and call it a “booming economy” with a straight face—I would’ve thought it a particularly cruel and poorly conceived joke.

But here we are.

…

The damage is real. And it will get worse. We are not even close to the bottom yet.

Because this doesn’t just shake the market. It shakes the Fed. It delays rate cuts. It raises prices. It hits consumer goods, healthcare, tech, food, and oil. It fractures alliances and emboldens adversaries. It hands China a propaganda win. It weakens labor. It punishes exporters. It shrinks small business margins. It craters consumer confidence.

This is the cost of delusion. This happens when the most powerful country on Earth decides that the laws of economics don’t apply if you yell loud enough, when your government becomes a theater troupe and your president a professional grievance artist.

“Professional grievance artist” is awfully polite.