Time to choose between Mr. Fix-it and Mr. Destroy-it
Donald Trump won the 2024 election thanks to two separate groups of voters. There are, of course, the Trump die-hards, people for whom Trump’s boast — that he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight and they would still love him — is probably literally true.
But that is not enough voters to win a general election — it wasn’t even enough to win the 2024 Republican primary in the overwhelming fashion one would expect from a near-incumbent. Nearly a quarter of Republican primary voters chose a different candidate.
Trump needed a lot more votes to win the general election, and he found them in a group of voters — independents and Republicans — who weren’t really crazy about him, but who believed he would do a better job of handling the economy than the Biden-Harris administration.
For each group, Trump had a very different message. The message to the second group was similar to the one he gave in his 2016 Republican convention acceptance speech: “I alone can fix it.” The 2024 version about the economy was “Harris and her friends broke it, and I will fix it.”
The message to his base, people who have been feeling for years that the American economy has left them behind, and that, as Trump frequently puts it, “the system is rigged,” the message was that the system should be torn down. The 2024 version of this was “For those who have been wronged and betrayed … I am your retribution.”
These two self-images — Trump as “Mr. Fix-it” and Trump as “Mr. Destroy-it,” are not necessarily contradictory: one can destroy something in order to rebuild a better version. But this is a painful process, and the only way to minimize the pain is to have a detailed plan prepared for the rebuild.
Trump has shown time and again that destruction comes easily to him; planning, not so much. In his first term, he came just one John McCain thumbs-down short of destroying Obamacare, but the only alternative Republicans could come up with was a watered-down version of it: just like Obamacare, only not as good. Trump had four years to come up with a superior plan, and four more years out of office to think about it, and yet, in the 2024 debate against Kamala Harris, he had to admit that all he had was “concepts of a plan.”
Besides, destroying and rebuilding takes time, and in his Mr. Fix-it mode, Trump was promising instant results, claiming, “I will immediately bring prices down, starting on Day One.” If the economy can be fixed that quickly, then it doesn’t need a complete engine rebuild; it just needs a little tinkering.
By promising a quick fix to one group and a complete rebuild of the economy to another, Trump set himself up for failure: he cannot possibly please both groups at once.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the issue of tariffs, Trump’s favorite weapon for taking a sledgehammer to the status quo. If he imposes steep tariffs, prices will go up, displeasing the people who voted for Mr. Fix-it. If he doesn’t impose the tariffs, he will be disappointing his blue-collar base, to whom he has promised tariffs as the key to the return of good manufacturing jobs.
Is it any wonder, then, that Trump has had so much trouble making up his mind on tariffs? On February 1, he announced that he would impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico. Two days later, perhaps responding to the sharp drop in the stock market, or perhaps just realizing the folly of raising the price of avocados just before the Super Bowl, he suspended the tariffs for 30 days. Just before the 30 days were up, he announced that he was really going to do it this time, and on March 4, the tariffs on Canada and Mexico went into effect. The next day, after meeting with representatives from the American automakers, he announced that he would make an exception for the auto industry, and the day after that, he announced another 30-day suspension of Canadian and Mexican tariffs.
Now Trump seems to be steeling himself for really going through with the tariffs. There has been a noticeable shift in his rhetoric: during the campaign, he said there would be no downside to tariffs for us; they were a tax on foreign countries. Speaking of tariffs during his State of the Union speech, he admitted, “There will be a little disturbance, but we’re OK with that. It won’t be much.” Over the following weekend, during an interview with Fox’s Maria Bartiromo, he wouldn’t even rule out a recession after tariffs went into effect, saying, “There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America.” He argued that we have to look to the long term, pointing out that China makes plans for the next hundred years. He actually had a point when he suggested that we need to think more about the long term, but that is not what he was telling voters last fall.
So he seems to be abandoning Mr. Fix-it entirely, but who knows what he will eventually decide?
In the meantime, the indecision itself has been bad for the economy. Businesses need to plan for the future, but this is impossible when the president keeps sending mixed signals about what he is going to do. Businesses need a certain amount of stability to thrive, but the mayhem caused by Trump’s Mr. Destroy-it policies is not a business-friendly environment.
Sooner or later, Trump is going to have to choose between the two campaign personas. The smart thing to do might be to forget about tariffs and focus on bringing down inflation. That is the option that would please the maximum number of voters. But “focus” isn’t in Trump’s vocabulary. And I wouldn’t ever count on him doing the smart thing.
