I subscribe to Puck, which I find delivers interesting, well-written, gossipy, stock market-adjacent stuff about a number of industries.

William D. Cohan, an investment banker turned investigative journalist had this to say the other day, under the above heading, about Trump’s appearance at the Economics Club of New York:

“Yes, Trump’s insane, rambling, nonsensical dissembling at the Economic Club of New York was the latest evidence of his declining acuity. But it was also yet another example of his terrible understanding of simple business concepts.”

I think this hits the nail on the head. Yes, Trump has a somewhat more stylish haircut recently and he’s lost a considerable amount of weight (semaglutide?). Maybe you get used to his orange face makeup. Maybe you can also get past the fact that he tried to overthrow the government when he lost the last election, that he’s a convicted felon, that he may well have given top secret documents to potential enemies …or that he seems to be undergoing a cognitive decline similar to Biden’s. This last may be accentuated by the fear that if he loses in November he may face years in jail.

The bottom line, though, about government policy is that Trump gives no evidence that he knows anything much about either economics or finance. We may argue about whether trickle-down economics has passed it’s sell-by date (I think it had a useful, if very painful, decade+ but no longer works). But I’d thought the devastation of the Great Depression had put to bed forever the notion that tariff wars are a good thing.