Source: The Weekly Dish
by Andrew Sullivan
“It has been a clarifying few days, hasn’t it? My mind kept wandering to the fable of Hans Christian Andersen about the emperor’s new clothes. Insulated from any reality, surrounded entirely by yes-men, and utterly convinced of his own unique powers of observation, the Emperor struts forth one day sure of his new finery, but in fact, remains completely starkers. It takes one small boy to point out the feeble willy swinging in the breeze, and the exposure is complete. Indelible. Irrecoverable. In this case, the bond market was the little boy. And the numbers proved what the cult kept denying: there was, and is, no coherence to the mad tariffs announced by the mad king — no strategy, no discernible math, no endgame, no rationality. It was just the crank who for decades has failed to understand trade finally acting out his long-held fantasies and delusions.” (04/11/25)
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-emperors-new-tariffs-a8d