The answer is yes. A resounding yes. This was obvious long before he was ever sworn in.
He may not consciously be doing it, but the rich assholes around him want a recession so they can buy everything for cheap and further increase their wealth.
Trump is dumb, but not so dumb that he doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing. He just doesn’t care about consequences because he’s neither faced them ever in his life, nor does he intend to face them in the future.
Hey may actually not understand the effects of his actions. He did go to the Wharton school but that was really a legacy/rich person admission. It has been reported that his professors considered him to be very stupid.
Oh, and he is. But no doubt he has people like Musk telling him how, even if Musk wasn’t having Tesla stock fold in front of him, his tariffs are going to kill his car sales (especially the cyber truck which has a ton of aluminum).
He knows. He’s been told. But he’s sticking to his story of how tariffs are a “tax break” on the people, it is other governments that pay them, and has his press secretary saying the same, even going so far as to throw insults at agencies who correctly call them out on their bullshit.
I also believe that it has less to do with his own understanding of things and more out of a principle of never admitting fault. If he pulls back the tariffs, then it means he was wrong to start with and that would mean he was weak all along…
