What did Donald Trump do today?

A bunch more random stuff regarding his trade war with the rest of the world.

Today, Trump did, or doubled down on, or recommitted to, or backed away from, or threatened to do many things related to his quixotic attempts to start a trade war with the entire world. They include:

• Sending one of his "letters" to Canada announcing a 35% tax on its exports to the United States—which, as with all tariffs, will be paid first by American importers and then by American consumers.

• It's hard to keep track exactly, but this appears to be the seventh distinct tariff regime Trump has said he would impose on the United States' largest trading partner, in his attempt to find a number that is big enough to claim a victory (even though Americans will pay any tariff) but small enough not to severely damage the United States economy.

• Trump explicitly tied this round of tariffs to the nonexistent "emergency" of fentanyl smuggling across the Canadian border. (Virtually no fentanyl is smuggled that way.) This is likely to create legal issues for him: the only actual legal authority Trump has cited to impose tariffs at a whim—which the Constitution gives to Congress, not the executive branch—is a law related to economic emergencies, and even that is facing a court challenge.  

• Having his bluff called on his threat to impose a 50% tax on Brazilian imports because its justice system was prosecuting a friend of his for corruption. 

• Yesterday, Trump threatened a 50% tariff on Brazil, explicitly because its government is pursuing corruption charges against its former president, Jair Bolsonaro. Like Trump, Bolsonaro is under criminal investigation for serious abuses against the nation he formerly led during and after his term in office—something Trump has taken deeply to heart.  

• Brazil's government absolutely refused to budge, and promised to retaliate. 

• Trump's claims to an economic emergency are even thinner in this case than others, as Brazil imports more from the United States than in exports.

• Straight-up lying to the American people about his "deal" with Vietnam.  

• Last week, as his self-imposed "90 deals in 90 days" deadline expired, Trump announced just his second "deal": an agreement in principle with Vietnam that would set the tax on American consumers of Vietnamese goods at 20%. The only problem, as it was revealed today, is that the rate Trump announced was not what American negotiators had agreed on with their Vietnamese counterparts. 

• Making copper cheaper for the rest of the world and more expensive for Americans. 

• Yesterday, Trump abruptly decreed that there would be a 50% tax paid by American consumers of foreign copper. As he put it in a post to his private microblogging website, "Copper is necessary for Semiconductors, Aircraft, Ships, Ammunition, Data Centers, Lithium-ion Batteries, Radar Systems, Missile Defense Systems, and even, Hypersonic Weapons, of which we are building many."
  
  
• Trump is correct that copper is an important strategic resource for the United States. That's why making imported copper more expensive here, apparently in an effort to jump-start mining operations in the United States that long ago stopped being economically viable, is a bad idea. But taking the U.S. off the market for foreign copper creates a supply glut for the rest of the world, and prices on foreign copper exchanges plummeted today. 

Unlike with his administration's other priorities, in which individual staff members and other people with a hold on Trump have effectively seized power from Trump without reprisal from him, his erratic pronouncements on trade appear to be entirely of his own doing. That may explain why, for all of his dozens of threats and recantations, relatively little is actually happening yet because there is a difference between a social media post and actual implementation of taxes on goods, which can be an incredibly complicated process.

Why does this matter?

• Creating mistrust with our trading partners and chaos in financial markets is what you'd do if you were trying to blow up the American economy. 

• Past a certain point, desperately trying to project strength has the opposite effect.