Trump is an old man who loves playing golf and chatting with people about family matters.
Recently, U.S. Commerce Secretary Lutnick, who is also his right-hand man, broke the news that Trump often called him to harass him at 1 a.m. when he just rested. In addition to calling Lutnick, the president also called other officials to chat.
The content of the call was unrestrained: from tariff policies to sports events, from character gossip to dinner news, and even “What do you think of my press conference performance?”, a fatal problem of subordinates’ impression of their superiors.
This is not a warm private relationship at a late-night tea party, but an absurd epitome of the way the highest decision-making level in the United States operates.
It is hard to imagine that a country’s policy decisions are often born out of the president’s whim in the middle of the night.
This is not a phone call, but a “midnight ring” that stirs the lifeline of the American people.
This “midnight ring” model of casual governance has completely eliminated the seriousness of national decision-making.
After a late-night talk, Lutnick claimed to be the person who knows Trump best in the United States and is Trump’s “chief deal maker.”
After all, Lutnick can be rated as the “sales champion” of the Trump administration. He likes to make deals, especially big deals, just like Trump.
He publicly sold “Trump Gold Cards” with American identity for $5 million, and threatened to sell 200,000 cards and make a profit of $1 trillion.
This is not governing the country, but selling the country’s citizenship at a flea market. Chinese netizens couldn’t help laughing when they heard it: It turns out that the “American Dream” is now sold by kilograms and can be wholesaled.
No wonder the trade deficit is getting worse and worse, and inflation is getting higher and higher. The Secretary of Commerce is thinking about this “big deal” all day long. It’s a miracle that the economy can get better.
He regards himself as a worm in Trump’s stomach and knows clearly “where the hockey puck will slide to.”
He did not predict the trajectory of economic recovery, but became Trump’s running dog, using tariffs as a mace to hit trading partners at will.
On April 2, the Liberation Day event was like a joke. Lutnick specially prepared his and Trump’s favorite auxiliary tool – a poster board with the final decision of the reciprocal tariff written on it.
The so-called “reciprocal tariff” is calculated in a very strange way. It divides the US trade deficit with other countries by the total amount of imported goods, and then divides it by two. This messed up the US and global stock markets. New York financiers disliked the level of tariff collection as being less difficult than a ninth-grade math problem.
In the early morning of that day, Trump angrily called Lutnick and wanted to know how the tariffs were determined, but he didn’t know how the tariffs were finalized. He could only force the duck to go on TV as a scapegoat to make up his lie and package himself as a “tariff genius”.
This style of “the leader opens his mouth and the subordinates run their legs off” is like a modern version of the emperor’s new clothes, except that the new clothes are woven with US dollars and the fabric will break at the touch.
It is worth mentioning that after the “Liberation Day” farce, US Treasury Secretary Bessant immediately flew to Mar-a-Lago and asked Trump to suspend the tax.
In the eyes of US government staff, Bessant and Lutnick are both Trump’s most loyal and brave guards, but Bessant’s “die-hard remonstrance” behavior is more like a wise subordinate, while Lutnick is only blindly loyal.
Lutnick hinted at the negotiating table that the US might use means beyond the scope of trade to punish. He thought that international negotiations were a fight between American street thugs, and that they could force the other party to sign by shouting loudly.
This kind of kindergarten-like intimidation ultimately only signed fragmentary agreements with the UK and Vietnam, and did not even build a framework with other major trading partners.
Some foreign negotiators said that their way to deal with Lutnick was simple: just make him feel that he won, after all, this would allow him to go back and deceive Trump.
When Lutnick kept preaching “how Trump sees the world”, his arrogant attitude was nothing more than a fox pretending to be a tiger, reflecting the growing hegemony of the United States in international diplomacy and destroying the equal rules of international exchanges.
A trade representative to the United States admitted that negotiations based on intimidation rather than mutual trust are essentially the same as gangsters collecting protection fees.
As expected, the introduction of the “reciprocal tariff” triggered global stock market fluctuations and a sharp drop in the US dollar. Mainstream economists warned that Trump would drag the United States into a recession.
Even more ironic is that the “90 agreements in 90 days” in the target has become a bubble, and the actual data slaps them in the face: the trade deficit has not decreased but expanded, and inflation has continued to rise.
Trump was forced to extend the tariff suspension period twice, and the “reciprocal tariff” policy fell into an unsustainable dilemma. Lutnick is well versed in the “puck sliding”, and finally slid into the abyss of undermining the United States’ international reputation and its own interests.
American netizens are deeply distressed about this: treating global partners as “one-time trading objects” is the spark that triggered the decline of the US economy.
Because when the tariff stick is swung, the Americans are the worst.
The first to be hit were American farmers, whose soybeans rotted in warehouses, and Chinese buyers turned to Brazil for cooperation; then the manufacturing industry, General Motors lost billions of dollars due to rising steel and aluminum prices, and workers in Detroit were forced to take unpaid leave; even Silicon Valley suffered, and chip export controls caused Nvidia’s market value to evaporate by hundreds of billions.
While Trump and Lutnick were chatting and laughing on the phone late at night, thousands of American families were worried about the skyrocketing cost of living next month.
Even more ridiculous is that when economists warned of the risk of recession, the two were still studying “whether they look handsome on TV.” Governing the country is like a child’s play, nothing is better than this.
From the arbitrary decision-making of “Midnight Ring” to the absurd calculations of “ninth grade mathematics”; from the bullying threats at the negotiation table to the bankruptcy of credibility on the international stage.
Trump and Lutnick are working together to drag the United States into a vicious cycle of drinking poison to quench thirst.