Senior administration officials profess privately to not knowing exactly what Trump will ultimately decide to do on trade at any given moment. The uncertainty has led the president’s advisers to compete for his attention in a bid to sway him, leading to nasty behind-the-scenes fights that are increasingly bursting into public view…
One senior administration official said privately this week that Navarro’s public scolding of the Treasury secretary was a “firing-level offense” but held out no hope that Trump would take any action.
The result of the infighting is a trade policy that’s nearly impossible for anyone to understand or predict and which risks undermining Trump’s economic and stock market gains. Thursday’s action sent markets down, compounding losses earlier in the week after the China announcement.
“This begins and ends at the top, and the president is behind all of it. He intends to be tactically unpredictable and thinks it’s a fantastic negotiating approach,” said economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the conservative American Action Forum.
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