> When he drops massive tariffs on everyone at once, it’s intended to force people to the table to negotiate with an uncomfortable starting position for them.

> When he drops massive tariffs on everyone at once, it’s intended to force people to the table to negotiate with an uncomfortable starting position for them. It might be the intent, though there is no proof of it, just like there's no proof for any of the other 4D chess fanfic. But if it's the intent, the means are obviously a horrible way to achieve that goal. If you want to force people to negotiate from an uncomfortable position while having all the leverage (rather than negotiating a mutually beneficial deal), you want to isolate them from support, you need a threat that hurts them worse than it'll hurt you, and you need them to believe that you won't back down such that their only option is to accept a bad deal. None of this is the case. By issuing the tariffs against ~all countries at the same time, the outcome of failed negotiations is going to be far worse for the US than for any other country (affecting a larger slice of their economy). These measures are intensely unpopular in the US, and opposing them is as popular abroad, so the public opinion is working toward a return to the status quo on both sides. Even if Trump himself doesn't care about public opinion, the Republican Senators and Representatives do, and they have the power to stop this. How long will it take for them to start fearing the general electorate more than the primary electorate? A couple of weeks? > If a few major countries capitulate in the next couple of weeks I think the market will probably catch its breath. How would they capitulate? The US itself has no idea of what its demands are. Again, something that you'd really want to line up in advance if this was all some galaxy brain negotiation play like you suggest.