Eureka!

          I think I got it! I have been trying to determine what possesses President Trump to do what he is doing. Nothing has been logical until now. I need to make only one assumption for everything to make sense. I assume that Trump is only smart enough to realize he is not smart enough to manage the country by himself, so he has attracted some camp followers who are financially conservative. These conservative thinkers have convinced our president that the biggest threat to our nation is the growing national debt. End of assumption. If that is true, then everything he is doing makes sense.

          President Trump’s ego got him in to politics, and he doesn’t have a diplomatic bone in his body. He is first and foremost a businessman. If a businessman’s company is losing money and on the brink of bankruptcy (which he has been convinced we are), he must do two things immediately. He must cut cost and increase income. President Trump has set out to do just that. His number one priority is to lower the debt; all else is secondary.

          The quickest way to decrease expenditures is to cut programs. To do that he must convince his board of directors (the voters) that the government is bloated and overly wasteful. He hired Elon Musk to lead the charge, and insulate the President from public wrath. Eliminating the Department of Education is not popular, but it is a lower priority that the debt, so education goes onto the scrap heap. Eliminating diversity and civil rights programs will cause some concern, but they are lower priorities than the debt. Aid to dependent children, disaster relief, international aid programs, school lunch programs, Medicaid, and ... are all subordinate to deficit reduction. He is trying to end the fighting in Ukraine because he very much wants to stop sending them money and equipment. He doesn’t care who wins or loses.  As long as he can reduce federal expenditures.

          He is convinced the American people will not accept increases in income taxes, so he has found another way to raise money – tariffs.  He can disguise tariffs as a way to stop fentanyl, to level the playing field, or to encourage domestic industry; but those are just smokescreens. His objective is to increase revenue. Our relations with other nations are of lesser priority than the debt. It doesn’t matter if our trading pardners reciprocate or not, tariffs still increase revenue.

          President Trump is correct in that this is a financial revolution. His conservative advisers firmly believe this drastic course change is the only way to save our nation from bankruptcy. I’m not sure if they’re right or not, but I now understand his rationale. If I were in charge, I would do things differently, but I’m not in charge.

Frank Watson is a retired Air Force Colonel and long-time resident of Eastern Washington. He has been a free-lance columnist for over 20 years.