The unprecedented tariffs announced Wednesday by President Donald Trump mark a decisive break with decades of bipartisan support for free trade. Even some economists and aides who support the levies – which include a minimum 10% on imported goods, with some countries subject to much higher rates – concede that they will inflict short-term economic pain. Mr. Trump himself has all but endorsed that view, brushing aside concerns about higher car prices.
Speaking in the Rose Garden, Mr. Trump promised “growth like we’ve never seen before,” as rising fears about a global economic downturn sent financial markets into a tailspin.
That embrace of risk, and any political fallout with it, may be a feature not a bug of this administration. From tariffs to immigration enforcement to government resizing to war-planning group chats, Mr. Trump and his inner circle have modeled boldness and at times recklessness in pursuing their goals. The Silicon Valley ethos embodied by Elon Musk and his outsider team – “move fast, break things” – has infused much of the administration in how it shapes and delivers on Mr. Trump’s agenda, say analysts. In some cases apparent errors – such as deporting immigrants without due process or mistaking their status – could also be seen as sending a message: that all migrants could be subject to such treatment.
Why We Wrote This
From tariff policy to combatting government bloat to tightening borders, Donald Trump’s second administration appears certain that some mistakes – or even a recession – are OK if larger goals for the nation are being served.
Mr. Musk has bluntly said his team “will make mistakes. We won’t be perfect,” he told Fox Business. “But when we do make mistakes, we will fix it very quickly.” Mr. Trump told Fox in March that he couldn’t rule out a recession this year as a result of his tariffs. “There is a period of transition because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America. … It takes a little time, but I think it should be great for us.” Similarly, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, when asked by CBS News about a possible tariff-induced recession, said “it’s worth it” to achieve the president’s goals.
To voters frustrated with the status quo who see Mr. Trump as an agent of change, the aggressive approach may seem preferable to an overly deliberative process that gets bogged down in bureaucracy. If mistakes happen, even serious self-inflicted harm, that’s just unfortunate collateral damage.
“Most Americans want to see the government cut back and made smaller. We want to see it become more efficient,” says Matt Wylie, a GOP strategist based in South Carolina.
From Project 2025 to DOGE
During Mr. Trump’s first term, he also frequently complained that some officials in his own administration opposed or slow-walked his directives. This time, he has a more loyal team. And Mr. Trump knows the ropes better in Washington. Before he took office in January, conservative groups had prepared a detailed agenda in Project 2025, a blueprint for shrinking the federal government and rolling back regulatory oversight.
This plan was then supercharged by Mr. Musk, whose Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has presided over a radical restructuring of the federal bureaucracy. In a few short months, entire agencies have been dismantled and tens of thousands of employees have been fired or put on leave.
Already, DOGE has been forced to backtrack on some things. Some federal employees had to be reinstated after courts ruled that the government had acted unlawfully. In other cases, the firings were reversed by DOGE itself. Probationary workers at the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees nuclear-weapon sites, were fired and then recalled, although the process took a while because DOGE had cut off their government emails and didn’t know how to contact them. Mr. Musk also froze an Ebola prevention program under the U.S. Agency for International Development, which it shuttered in January, then claimed to have restarted it without disruption, which USAID officials in Uganda disputed.
The indiscriminate firings may reflect Mr. Musk’s personal disdain for federal employees and much of the work they do. On X, his social-media platform, he has disparaged federal workers as inefficient or lazy. He has labeled others as “radical Marxists” who divert funds to Democrats and Democratic causes.
Republicans have long hoped to shrink the federal government and laid out plans for doing so, says George Thomas, a professor of American political institutions at Claremont McKenna College. While Mr. Musk’s slash-and-burn approach has so far achieved more than most anti-government crusaders before him, it comes with clear risks. He “seems to have no idea what these institutions do…[and] his ignorance is taken to be a virtue,” Professor Thomas says. “He just seems intent on wrecking American institutions.”
On Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services began laying off several thousand workers at agencies that oversee drug approvals, medical research, addiction services, and other functions. Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said on X the cuts wouldn’t affect “essential health services” and would realign the department with his mission to focus on prevention.
Mr. Trump has said that personnel cuts are the remit of his Cabinet secretaries, who should use a “scalpel” to remove low performers from agencies. “I want the Cabinet members to keep the good people, and the people that aren’t doing a good job, that are unreliable, don’t show up to work, etc., those people can be cut,” the president told reporters last month.
DOGE’s approach, which has already drawn a flood of litigation, may yield only modest fiscal savings. But the greater impact won’t be known until sometime in the future, when hollowed-out agencies try to respond to a crisis, says Martin Gilens, a professor of public policy at UCLA. “A lot of the consequences will be slow to develop,” he says. Republicans have argued that states’ capacity to respond to crises should be bolstered so they’re not as reliant on federal agencies.
Prioritizing speed over deliberation
Unlike in Mr. Trump’s first term, when an inexperienced administration didn’t notch many significant achievements, his second term is likely to yield bigger wins, at least in the year and a half before next year’s midterms. But the administration’s successes may seed its own downfall, says Professor Gilens. “This time it seems like the problems that they’re going to face are not being unable to do what they want, but rather the problems that result from doing what they want.”
That includes imposing across-the-board tariffs on allies and major trading partners, a policy that until recently would have been anathema to most mainstream Republicans, as a drag on growth and investment.
Mr. Trump said on Wednesday that tariffs, scheduled to take effect over the next week, would stimulate investment in U.S. factories. “If you want your tariff rate to be zero then you build your product right here in America.” Analysts say that such investments take years and that uncertainty over U.S. trade policy – and Mr. Trump’s history of using tariffs to force unrelated concessions – made it harder for businesses to plan such investments.
The Senate voted Wednesday to narrowly approve a Democratic resolution opposing U.S. tariffs on Canada, with four Republicans supporting it. White House officials have said that Mexico and Canada will receive exemptions from tariffs under a trilateral free-trade agreement.
Tariffs could be a serious political liability for Mr. Trump, since voters had expected him to lower prices, warns Robert Blizzard, a Republican pollster. “Most voters believe that tariffs will mean higher prices for them now and in the long run,” he says. Mr. Trump and his team will need to “educate” voters on what they argue will be the positive impact of tariffs on the economy and personal finances.
Still, voters also hold a dim view of how Democrats govern. President Joe Biden’s ratings never recovered from the chaotic exit from Afghanistan in his first year in office.
While tariffs raise questions about economic risk-taking, Mr. Trump’s administration has also shown incaution in other areas. National security adviser Mike Waltz’s use of Signal, an unsecure app, for a group chat about a U.S. bombing mission in Yemen raised questions about competence. Mr. Trump defended Mr. Waltz and others on the chat, including Vice President JD Vance, which inadvertently included the editor of The Atlantic. (Mr. Waltz also reportedly used his personal Gmail account for other weapons-related communications.)
“Signalgate” and the administration’s subsequent efforts to spin it as no big deal was reminiscent of Mr. Trump’s first term, says Mr. Wylie, the GOP strategist. Republican voters expected a more stable ship this time, and while there is more internal cohesion, the results so far have been mixed – particularly at DOGE, which he calls “an excellent idea that’s been horribly executed.”
Part of the problem is prioritizing speed over deliberation, possibly in anticipation of midterm losses in Congress, says Mr. Wylie. He also sees a strategy to overwhelm voters who don’t have time to digest all the details of what the administration is doing. “Tariffs and DOGE destruction go hand in hand. It doesn’t allow the American people to focus on what’s happening,” he says.
