Arthur E. Sowers is a resident of Harbeson.
In a recent poll from the Pew Research Center, dated Jan. 29, researchers found that “(h)alf of Americans say (Donald) Trump’s actions have been worse than they expected.” They also found that “Trump’s approval rating stands at 37%, down from 40% in the fall.” They also found that “(o)nly about a quarter of Americans today (27%) say they support all or most of Trump’s policies and plans, down from 35% when he returned to office last year.” You can read for yourself the article: “Confidence in Trump Dips, and Fewer Now Say They Support His Policies and Plans.” But there are reasons to believe that things will get even worse.
Trump deliberately upset the global trade “applecart” when he accused other nations of “ripping off” the U.S. For that, he threatened to raise — then actually did raise — tariffs on all our trading partners. But I suspect that Trump was deliberately misinforming the public. Since I have some knowledge about trade economics, I asked four artificial intelligences to confirm my suspicions about this with a question. The question needed four sentences, and the details are beyond the scope of this letter. The answers I got were similar. Grok’s response was about five pages long and was the best. Here are two sentences from the conclusion: “Your core take — that partners’ higher tariffs are ‘reasonable’ given US dominance — is solid. It’s not a fairy tale that asymmetries exist, but Trump’s framing oversimplifies them as malice rather than policy choices in a system the US helped build.” Thus, my doubt about Trump’s tariff story is vindicated.
Trump’s tariff project and his recent even more erratic behavior has spooked the rest of the world in many ways.
First, an article from a New Zealand business website: “Is the world losing faith in the US economy?”
Second, an article on POLITICO, titled “Europe begins deleting America,” tells about Europe buying “services” from the U.S., but, under Trump’s unstable thinking and string of recent harmful threats against Europe, Europe is now thinking of backing out of the purchasing of U.S. services.
Third, Germany owns 1,200 tons of gold, which is physically stored in a vault in New York. In view of Trump’s wild statements, threats and actions, Germany is now thinking about bringing its gold physically back to Germany. Read this article for details: “German Officials Renew Calls to Bring Gold Home.”
Add to that the fact that China is aiming to replace the U.S. dollar with the Chinese yuan. This is explained in this article: “Xi calls for building ‘strong’ yuan to boost global role, challenge dollar dominance.” This will hurt the U.S., too. It will get even worse if the U.S. dollar falls against other currencies; then, virtually everything we import will cost more, regardless of tariffs. This article from a European banking news network is showing that this is possible: “(International Monetary Fund) prepares for global run on US dollar.”
Fourth, to escape the threat of Trump’s tariff increases, many countries are now starting to set up stable and free trade agreements that do not involve the U.S. at all. Here is a CNN article on one of them: “EU and South America’s Mercosur bloc sign landmark free trade agreement.” Here is a similar article on Yahoo!Finance: “All the biggest trade deals so far in 2026 don’t involve the US.” And here is yet another article on the same website: “Wall Street Grapples With New Risk: A European Buyers’ Strike.” Lastly, here is one from MSN about how investors are preferring to invest anywhere but in the U.S.: “Investors are ‘quiet quitting’ the US as Trump chaos fuels global diversification.” This just means that, if countries in the rest of the world trade with each other, and not with the U.S., it will isolate the U.S., so Trump cannot bully any country with tariff increase threats.
Trump promised us that his “reciprocal” tariff solution would fix the trade deficit problem. However, this article from CNBC, a business website, says the trade deficit problem got worse: “Trade deficit soared 94% in November and was higher than a year ago, despite tariff efforts.” And Trump has also made our national debt problem worse than ever. That fact is easily verifiable on the internet.
According to this article, the forced deportations Trump is ordering, in addition to the coerced self-deportations, are even worse for the economy than originally estimated by economists: “Fact Check: Do mass deportations cause job losses for American citizens?”
From ancient times right up to the present, authoritarian repression often led to revolts, rebellions or revolutions. Today, in our relatively still civilized country, displeasure with Trump’s governance shows up in negative polls, pushbacks or protests. Besides the fact that polls are showing continual decline in the approval of Trump, his gestapo project (involving U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection) is also getting more disapprovals. Even Fox News is trying to tell Trump something with this article: “Fox News Poll: 59% of voters say ICE is too aggressive, up 10 points since July.” Trump’s disastrously repressive events in Minnesota have led to a second protest movement, as described in this article: “A shadow network in Minneapolis defies ICE and protects immigrants.” This movement has gained speed with technical aid, as this article explains: “Protesters go digital against ICE.”
Lastly, the first “No Kings” protest movement (still accessible at the website nokings.org) is still scheduling events, according to this article: “More ‘No Kings’ protests planned for spring in wake of Minnesota deaths.” For Chicago, see the article: “Nationwide boycott targeting ICE planned for (Jan. 30).”
More people need to view all this in terms of how Trump’s actions are increasing the chance for a worldwide recession.
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
