Donald Trump, back at his beloved Mar-a-Lago, is hosting a new kind of court – one filled with business titans, potential cabinet members, and those seeking a favor from the newly elected president. Trump's first term saw numerous visits to the Florida resort, and now, it appears to be a central hub for the new administration. His agenda focuses on tariffs as the solution to various economic woes, a stance that raises concerns among economists. While Trump enjoys the attention and power, critics warn of potential consequences, particularly for the US's trading relationships.
Court is in session at Mar-a-Lago, and it is the kind of court the owner likes. Even when he was president, Donald Trump seemed to prefer the golf shirts and sunshine of his Florida home over the formality of the White House, and a watchdog group clocked him making 134 visits to that private club and golf course during his first term in office. There, many observers noted, he basked in standing ovations when he walked to his private table for dinner.
He greeted an endless stream of friends and admirers. And now, it is a river: Job and influence seekers, friends of friends, the rich, famous and powerful, even people who have paid members of the club to get them past the front door – all jockeying for any stray minute with the victorious president-elect. The list of those seeking an audience will grow to include some of the biggest names in business: Tim Cook from Apple, Sundar Pichai from Google, Ted Sarandos from Netflix, and Jeff Bezos from Amazon. “I had dinner with almost all of them and the rest are coming,” Trump will eventually say of his fellow billionaires, dryly noting the change in atmosphere. “The first term everybody was fighting me. This term everybody wants to be my friend.” It seems hardly coincidental weeks later, when Mark Zuckerberg of Meta decides to cut fact checkers from Facebook and Instagram – a feature right-wingers have often howled about. Some outside observers, such as CNN’s Jim Acosta who covered Trump’s first term, are watching the pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago skeptically. “It seems bending the knee is in for 2025. A lot of people think that will take you places, and it tends to lead to bad places… with Trump.” Still, after the long months of campaigning, he is reportedly content to let the world come to him for a change. While loyal staffers scramble to simultaneously prepare for the transition and house hunt in DC, the boss is playing golf, talking to candidates for administration jobs, and meeting favor-seekers on the patio. “He’s been very active, but he gets to do it from base camp. He’s happy laying low right now,” a Trump adviser tells CNN. And what better place to rock boats than a seaside town? As promised during his campaign, Trump is wasting no time laying out an aggressive, immediate – and for his foes, alarming – agenda. “It’s going to be at lightning speed,” adviser Stephen Miller says of the coming changes on Fox News, noting the new White House team is “prepared, under President Trump’s leadership, to implement historical, transformative, long-awaited change to make this government accountable to the people of this country once again. It will be as Donald Trump said, a new golden age for America.” On his pledge to make the economy better and pull inflation down even further than President Joe Biden already has, Trump has a one-word answer: Tariffs. “I’m a big believer in tariffs,” he tells NBC’s “Meet the Press” in his first post-election network TV interview, echoing comments from his campaign. “I think tariffs are the most beautiful word. I think they’re beautiful. It’s going to make us rich.” Many who have shared Trump’s orbit for years say he profoundly believes in the power of these fees imposed on goods imported to the US from other countries. He cites tariffs as an almost mythical fix for trade imbalances, loss of domestic manufacturing jobs, and a potential key to eliminating taxes up to and including the federal income tax. He likes to talk about the tariffs he launched during his first term, some of which the Biden administration maintained. “I had a lot of tariffs on a lot of different countries, but in particular China. We took in hundreds of billions of dollars, and we had no inflation.” The problem? An overwhelming majority of economic experts say that last part is untrue, and most of Trump’s ideas about how tariffs work are flatly wrong. For starters, since the cost is frequently passed on to consumers, in practical speak, tariffs are taxes. And an analysis by the non-partisan Tax Foundation of some of the tariffs Trump applied in his first term is damning: Trump instigated a trade war by imposing new tariffs (taxes) on imports of washing machines and solar panels…steel and aluminum…and billions of dollars’ worth of consumer, intermediate, and capital goods from China…throughout 2018 and 2019. Based on levels of trade before the tariffs went into effect, the new levies amounted to a tax increase of $80 billion a year. And while tariffs can increase federal government income, budget analysts widely agree even massive tariff hikes would come nowhere near replacing the taxes Trump has targeted. Trade experts broadly say the new tariffs Trump wants to slap on the US’ biggest trading partners – China, Mexico, Canada and perhaps scores of other countries – could raise prices on televisions, smartphones, household appliances, furniture, clothing, cement, sporting goods, medicine and many more product
DONALD TRUMP MAR-A-LAGO TARIFFS ECONOMY TRADING RELATIONS
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