What did Donald Trump do today?

He told struggling ranchers that they "don't understand" that they're actually making too much money.

Thanks to Trump's imposition of massive taxes on imported consumer goods, and in particular on Brazil, the price of beef in the United States has skyrocketed. Normally, the silver lining would be that U.S. beef producers would benefit from the higher prices. But because Trump has declared a trade war on essentially the entire world, they're struggling too. Fuel, machinery, feed, fertilizer, and other essentials for the ranching business have all gotten more expensive too, erasing profits and causing business failures. 

Then, when Trump announced he'd lower domestic beef prices by striking a sweetheart deal with Argentina. The president of Argentina is Javier Milei, who has shown a lucrative talent for manipulating Trump, most recently into a $20 billion currency bailout—and, as Trump announced recently, a deal to import cheap (and possibly diseased) Argentinian beef.

In other words, Trump made things worse for the beef industry by imposing one set of tariffs, and is now threatening to make things much worse by relaxing the only ones that worked in their favor. Ranchers, to say nothing of politicians from rural areas that depend on ranches, were understandably outraged and have been furiously attacking Trump's "betrayal" of the American beef industry ever since.

Trump may have meant to smooth things over today in a post to his private microblogging site, but what he actually said was this:

The Cattle Ranchers, who I love, don't understand that the only reason they are doing so well, for the first time in decades, is because I put Tariffs on cattle coming into the United States, including a 50% Tariff on Brazil. If it weren't for me, they would be doing just as they've done for the past 20 years - Terrible! It would be nice if they would understand that, but they also have to get their prices down, because the consumer is a very big factor in my thinking, also! 

In other words, Trump is saying that he thinks that the market price of beef is whatever beef producers want it to be, instead of something determined by supply and demand. It's not clear why Trump thinks that his "beloved" cattle ranchers should have to absorb the costs of his other trade taxes.

Trump, 79, once received a degree from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. 

Why does this matter?

• The problem is that Donald Trump doesn't understand why his import taxes are killing businesses, not that the businesses being killed by them don't understand. 

• Donald Trump's personal friendship with one foreign leader is not more important than the entire American beef industry or the consumers who rely on it.