Don & Elon’s Excellent Adventure? Only China Is Laughing.

Opinion|Don & Elon’s Excellent Adventure? Only China Is Laughing.

When I look at the torrent of executive orders and tariffs President Trump has issued since taking office, I fear that I’m watching the real-life version of that Certified Financial Planner Board commercial that tries to show why expertise really does matter. In the commercial, a surgeon comes into a hospital room and meets his patient. First, the doctor calls her Brenda and she says, “It’s Carol.” Then the doctor asks, “So which leg are we operating on?” And she says, “You mean arm.” The doctor then waves off her obvious concern, saying, “It’s all connected.” Now totally terrified, the patient finally asks the surgeon: “Are you sure you’re an orthopedist?” The doctor responds: “Actually, I’m a Sagittarius.”

Pardon my skepticism, but I have serious doubts about the degree to which Trump and his team of budget surgeons have actually studied not just how to implement all the cuts and tariffs and freezes and dismissals they’ve rushed to make but also the long-term effects they will have on the totality of American governance, trade and investment.

Whose work are we watching here? That of a surgeon or a Sagittarius? Are we seeing the unfolding of a plan that has been stress-tested and modeled for months, with all the implications fully understood?

Or are we seeing the unfolding of a paper napkin from the Mar-a-Lago bar with some half-baked ideas sketched out and then chaotic seat-of-pants wrangling between Trump and his aides and lobbyists over which industries will be hit and which will be spared?

I’m going with the napkin. It’s hard for me to say it better than the normally pro-Trump Wall Street Journal’s editorial entitled “The Dumbest Trade War in History, which says “Trump will impose 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico for no good reason.”

But Trump’s impulsive tariffs — which he seems to announce and put on hold at whim — are symptomatic of a deeper challenge to U.S. manufacturers that I want to write about today: how U.S. companies keep pace with China in the industries of the future — artificial intelligence, advanced logic chips, electric vehicles, clean tech and autonomous cars — when these companies are constantly being whipsawed between Democratic and Republican presidents in a world where these companies have to make multi-billion-dollar bets five years in advance. And they have to make those bets while competing against China, where the government wakes up every day and asks manufacturers: How can I help you? And: Let’s take the long view together on how we win globally.