Opinion | Trump is on the road to bankruptcy

In May 2017, a few months after the first Trump administration, me he wrote A column that argues that its inability was so obvious and destructive that it should have been removed from the position through the 25th amendment to the Constitution.

This was a popular column, but its argument did not hold well. The first term white house of Trump remained abnormally chaotic and Trump remained, well, himself-but compared to the initial months, his presidency stabilized sufficiently that the claim of inability and the request for constitutional intervention did not adapt to the facts. My column had been written in a spirit of “this cannot continue”. But he went on – and above all, he continued with better results in economic and foreign policy than I had thought possible, to the point that within a few years by Joe Biden (which became a more exemplary 25th case!), The voters were nostalgic for Trumpian’s results.

There have been many moments like that for the observers of the Trump phenomenon – moments in which it seemed that its defects were leading to an irrevocable accident, or when it seemed that it was finished politically forever. From time to time, these judgments have proven premature; From time to time, Trump attempted destiny and lived to tell the story.

That’s why, when he returned to the office, I promised to avoid premature declarations of the catastrophe. I would cry, but I would not behave as if everything were unrecoverable for at least the first year.

This week he seriously tested that resolution. None of the first -term policies of Trump has led to the complete risks involved in his great commercial war: the threat of recession, the potential threat to the American global position and also the basic solvency. Also with the suspension of national rates by country, the scope of the Chinese commercial war and the general uncertainty created by the Trump Whipsaw take over economic pain without a clear path towards a rebound.

This is a bad place to be for a president who has always depended on good economic vibrations, and is happening on a background of other wrong curves and disappointments. I wrote in December on need a fruitful balance Among the populist and techno-liberal factions of Trumpism, between the spirit of JD Vance and the spirit of Elon Musk. I was imagining, for example, the recovery policy combined with deregulation oriented towards abundance-but, on the other hand, the balance so far consists of a commercial commercial war from the populist part and the Musk crusade to reduce the count of the government’s leaders without evident regarding the government’s ability. It is a sort of synthesis, but not happy.

In the meantime, everything that the administration does, does with a dose of excess of hard, as if it were determined to alienate any part of its coalition which is not fully engaged in the sorceress cause. It is not enough to pursue deportations; We have to expel people in a prison in El Salvador without condemning them to any crime. It is not enough to ask our NATO allies to bear multiple charges; The question must come with a growl, a commercial war and a fixation on Greenland. It is not enough to eliminate the programs of the; We must also hack scientific research and humanitarian aid.

All this makes a very bad trajectory and the fact that Trump has survived bad trajectories before does not mean that this is destined to reverse. Perhaps this time it is too cocked and unbridled, too surrounded by adulators, too confident in its place among the decisive figures of the story (someone should tell them about their often unhappy endgames) to guide the stability and popularity.

But if he or his advisers wanted to guide differently, we are still at a time when the correction of the course would be relatively simple. The economy is not yet in recession and Trump is underwater but not yet deeply unpopular. This means that it has options now that it will not have if things get worse; It means that he can still pursue his favorite policies if he does it with less reckless contempt.

It can have rates; It cannot have the rates of “liberation day”, with their scale and the reduced wire design. It can have deportations; It must only accept the limits imposed by moral decency and the Supreme Court. It can have a version of the government efficiency department, just reduced to deregulation, where it should have been focused from the beginning. It can have yes-by-use and dishes; He just needs some people in his toilet to say: “Lord, maybe not”.

He can even pine for Greenland and court his inhabitants. He cannot threaten to go get him.

During his time as a dominant force in our policy, Trump showed an ability for what you could call temporary discipline, linked to an instinct of raw survival and a prevailing sense of wind.

If those instincts are still with him, this is the time to listen to them and remember that while Fortune has his favorites, NEmesis always waits.