In a second term of fiat, flubbing and flip–flopping, Trump pursued his desire to wield a club over everyone and everything

By imposing punitively high tariffs, Donald Trump was playing a high-stakes game of chicken with America’s trading partners – but it was Trump who chickened out and suspended his tariffs just hours after they took effect. The president couldn’t ignore the worldwide economic havoc that he had caused singled-handedly – stock markets were plunging, business executives were panicking and consumers were seething.

Eager to persuade manufacturers to build new plants in the US, Trump said on Monday that many of his tariffs would be permanent. But for Trump, permanent evidently meant two days.

Ministers are insisting that Trump’s regime can still be a friend. It’s a delusion and a lie

Whatever Britain’s relationship with the US under Donald Trump might be, it should not be called an alliance. That word implies common goals, shared burdens and trust – a cooperative model that is not available from the White House.

Trump’s warped concept of reciprocity is encapsulated in his belief that foreigners are guilty of “pillage” when they sell more goods to the US than they buy in return. The punitive levy, applied in proportion to the offending nation’s excess exports, is a “reciprocal” tariff in the president’s lexicon.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

This is something that I realized this week after leaving for work but having to turn back because I forgot my phone. That phone hosts an app containing my train tickets: without it, I wouldn’t be able to commute to work—unless we do it the YOLO way, of course. I despise apps and have expressed my dislike for them at many occasions here on Brain Baking (see for example Smartphone Pervasiveness). Registering an account took 10 attempts and 3 browsers.

But we’re not here to diss on one particular app, but on the very dangerous services centralization movement. That same software as a (centralized cloud) service movement that we as privacy-aware tech nerds do identify as a real threat. As a response, we search and find alternative software that doesn’t rely on just one Silicon Valley tech giant, we self-host software, we turn to distributed social media services backed by ActivityPub. And by “we” I mean the 1% that is technically capable to do so and that cares enough to do it.

Yet it seems that we forget to critically evaluate that thing we carry with us all the time (and is connected to god-knows-what all the time): our phone. Ads happily announce yet another handy new app that provides convenience for the end user, having “everything in one place”. Well, I’m here to tell you that having everything in one place is a bug, not a feature. Instead, I think we should aim to distribute, not centralize.

I don’t want to be dependent on my phone to:

• Buy groceries in the supermarket as a credit card replacement;
• Store and validate train tickets as a railway subscription card replacement;
• Receive & reply to emails, read news, use a spreadsheet editor, … as a computer replacement;
• Play games as a dedicated handheld gaming replacement;
• Scan QR codes and have to surf the web just to be able to read what’s on the menu as a proper printed restaurant menu replacement;
• Read & write notes as a pen & paper/notebook replacement;
• Read eBooks as a book replacement;
• Identify myself using an app that gobbles up my data as a identity card replacement that suddenly drops off the radar two years later only to then have to repeat this procedure with another shady vendor;
• Take mindless snapshots instead of real photos as a dedicated camera replacement;
• …

The more dependent we become on this one device, the worse it becomes: big tech bros will love having more access to our data, and decision makers will find even more creative ways to have “everything in one place”. Speaking of data, I have never encountered a service that is fully transparent as to (1) what data is exactly used for what, (2) where it is stored, and (3) how they secure and eventually delete it.

The worst thing, however, is that I fear it is too late to stop this. That 1% critical mass like this rant here is not going to change anything. We can urge people to be more mindful when it comes to phone and services-on-phone usage, but we cannot turn the tide thanks to, among many other factors, the way capitalism seems to work. Judging from the way most people use their phone, it seems that either they don’t care or they’re in too deep.

Even the critical-minded folks will have gradually less and less options to bow out. The particular kind of flexible train ride subscription I wanted was for some unknown reason “only available using the app”. There was no way around it: more and more I am being forced to centralize services on my phone. And I fucking hate it.

Opening up a professional bank account was a nightmare because I was running a phone without Google Play Services. The bank employees were flabbergasted and had “never experienced this kind of failure” when attempting to create an account. Previously, this could be done with just a few clicks with their software and a few print-outs of various forms. Now, it requires a smartphone and their dedicated app on the client’s phone to sign the paperworks. The fallback in case that doesn’t work simply was scratched. When I ask them how they handle opening up accounts for older people without smartphone knowledge, they simply replied “old people don’t open professional accounts sir”. Are you kidding me?

They were not. So now I am a very unsatisfied customer who still found a loophole and it’s just a matter of time before that’s closed too and I’m out of options to decentralize my own stuff.

So what can we do to help combat this centralization movement?

• Complain! If there would be enough people with “broken phones”, the bank institution would have no choice but to provide alternatives. But it seems that I was the only curious case they’ve had in years. I also complain when restaurants are too lazy to print their menus: I don’t want to bring a smartphone to a social dinner, and I certainly don’t want to pay for the internet connection just to download a .PDF. This is called off-loading costs and you won’t see me there ever again.
• Be mindful! Ask and look for alternatives. Don’t just mindlessly install that app.
• Distribute the services you can. Don’t connect your email to your smartphone. Buy a book or dedicated e-reader. If you’re into gaming, get yourself a retro gaming portable.
• Disable as much as you can. Don’t rely on NFC to pay.

This is very obvious but deservers to be mentioned time and time again: get rid of your Google account. Find other ways to host your photos and contact information. I know this sounds easy but in practice can be a real pain, especially if you’re not very technical. And that is exactly why all this makes me very mad: if I as dabbler in technical things can’t even get all this done, then how are we supposed to protect everyone else who also deserve privacy and security?

Related topics: / phone /

By Wouter Groeneveld on 6 April 2025.  Reply via email.

If you had told me a decade ago that a former president would waltz back into the White House, torch the global economy, slap double-digit tariffs on damn near everything, spook the markets into evaporating over three trillion dollars in a single day, and call it a "booming economy" with a straight face—I would've thought it a particularly cruel and poorly conceived joke.

But here we are. 

Trump has levied a 10% tariff on all U.S. imports starting April 5. He's slapped 34% on Chinese goods. 25% on cars from Canada. 24% on Japan. 20% on the EU. Even Australia has come in for a kicking.

The Dow dropped 1,600 points. The Nasdaq cratered nearly 6%. Apple, Amazon, and Nvidia were all slammed. Volkswagen literally hiked sticker prices on cars overnight. Factories are already shutting down in Mexico and Canada. Beer's about to get more expensive because aluminum cans are now an international incident. And the man responsible, in his usual flex of ego and delusion, says: "Markets are going to boom."

This is ideology, as much as incompetence. It's dumb-as-a-box-of-hair economic nationalism in the empty drag of populism. It's an out-of-touch billionaire feeding you the illusion of sovereignty while snatching your wallet. It's a blundering manoeuvre designed to look strong and decisive while clumsily shifting the blame for failure onto "foreigners," "globalists," or anyone not named Donald Trump.

The damage is real. Global markets dove off a cliff. The dollar is sinking. Supply chains are seizing up. Allies are retaliating. The cost of living will spike. And this self-inflicted wound is being sold as some kind of righteous blow against the big, bad global order.

We live in the dumbest timeline.

But this?

This is weaponized stupidity. 

Trump has vandalized the global economy with the same reckless, self-absorbed impunity he brought to every other part of his career—bankruptcy, branding scams, real estate cons, steak sales, fake universities, insurrections, and multiple marriages. Now he's decided to do it again, with a pen and a podium, because he knows he can. 

He knows that half the country will cheer him on no matter how destructive the result. Why wouldn't they? They've been taught to root against themselves if it means someone else suffers more. Their vision of America isn't based on mutual prosperity—it's built on domination, resentment, and the pleasure of watching the other guy squirm.

The financial press is attempting - ham-fistedly - to treat all this with its usual deadpan neutrality. "Tariffs spark fears of recession." "Markets fall amid trade concerns." Concern. As if this is weather. As if it just rolled in from the coast, and, oh well, it's time to grab your umbrella. There is no such thing as a neutral tone when the world is being looted in broad daylight. Language should indicate, not obscure.

The only rational response to this level of bad-faith governance is to laugh. Because if you don't laugh, you scream. And if you scream, you're told you're hysterical or unhinged while the world burns down behind you.

This is a structural crisis. And it's not just about stocks. I wish it were about stocks. It's about a country so broken, propagandized, and high on its own supply that it confuses sabotage for strategy. It's about a system where crashing the economy can be spun as leadership if the narrative is controlled well enough. It's about a media ecosystem afraid to name reality and an electorate so burned by betrayal that they'll trust the arsonist over the firefighter. 

Donald Trump is a man with a history of bankruptcies doing what he always does: gambling with someone else's money. Except this time, it's yours. It's every worker laid off. Every single parent now facing higher grocery bills. Every business owner watching their supply chain crack in half. Every retiree seeing their 401(k) nosedive.

The damage is real. And it will get worse. We are not even close to the bottom yet.

Because this doesn't just shake the market. It shakes the Fed. It delays rate cuts. It raises prices. It hits consumer goods, healthcare, tech, food, and oil. It fractures alliances and emboldens adversaries. It hands China a propaganda win. It weakens labor. It punishes exporters. It shrinks small business margins. It craters consumer confidence.

This is the cost of delusion. This happens when the most powerful country on Earth decides that the laws of economics don't apply if you yell loud enough, when your government becomes a theater troupe and your president a professional grievance artist.

Everything is on fire. The arsonist is grinning on live TV. And the world is laughing.

But make no mistake: they're not laughing with you.

BRUSSELS — As Donald Trump unveiled his list of tariffs on American trading partners in a bold attempt to reduce the United States’ trade deficit, many are questioning how the duties were calculated.

It didn’t take long before someone cracked the code on how the White House decided to overturn the global trade order. 

The White House claimed to base its decision on tariff rates and nontariff barriers, but economic journalist James Surowiecki reckons it was all just a back-of-the-envelope calculation. “Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country’s exports to us,” the former financial columnist for The New Yorker posted on X. “What extraordinary nonsense this is.”

That approach meant Trump and his advisers simply took the U.S. trade deficit with the European Union — $235.6 billion in 2024 — and divided it by the bloc’s exports to the U.S., which totaled $605.8 billion. 

The result was 39 percent, which the administration interpreted as the “unfair” trade advantage the EU holds over the U.S. From there, the White House proposed a 20 percent tariff, framing it as a corrective measure to level the playing field.

Trump, speaking in the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday, said he was being “kind” by cutting the tariff rate almost in half.