Following the 2025 presidential election, it became clear that a major factor in Donald Trump’s victory was deep economic dissatisfaction among the American electorate. The overriding themes of Joe Biden’s domestic economic agenda were pervasive inflation, soaring interest rates, housing and healthcare becoming increasingly unaffordable, and wealth inequality continuing to skyrocket. More surface-level indicators like the S&P 500, Dow Jones, GDP and unemployment remained strong under Biden, but the foundational issues that plague the American economy only continued to worsen.

In viewing the aftermath of the November election, issue polling indicated that the economy was one of Trump’s strongest issues, with a majority of the electorate indicating that they trusted him to lower prices and generally govern in a fashion similar to his first term in office. However, early in his second administration, Trump has governed in a wildly different fashion from his first term, essentially taking a sledgehammer to key components of the American economy. A lot of people who thought they were voting for economic stability have instead seen economic chaos, destruction and multitudes of what seem to be inexplicable, head-scratching decisions. As a result, Trump is underwater in polling on the issue of the economy, even though his overall approval has remained fairly steady. This is a much different story than his first term, where the economy was consistently Trump’s strongest issue.

However, it’s important that the public not chalk up many of the economic decisions early in the second Trump administration as chaos, incompetence or poor judgment but something far more intentional and, if taken to its logical conclusion, possibly sinister. For instance, one of the president’s signature policies is blanket tariffs against Canada, Mexico and China, along with wide-reaching tariffs on other key trading partners. Blanket tariffs can only be described as domestic economic sanctions, essentially shooting yourself in the foot. The entire purpose of tariffs is to spur domestic production and consumption in certain sectors by placing higher prices on foreign goods, but without any specificity or long-term, wide-scale plan to implement domestic manufacturing, the tariffs simply act as an additional tax on Americans.

When the American government places economic sanctions on another country, the intent is to weaken and, eventually, destroy the economy of said country, so it’s obvious that domestic economic sanctions like tariffs would have the same effect, whatever the intent is. A recent article from CBS News outlined a frightening burgeoning economic picture as a result of the policies Trump is undertaking. “A new survey from Bank of America shows that global fund managers are moving out of domestic companies in what analysts at the financial giant describe as the ‘biggest drop in U.S. equity allocation ever.’ The reason: growing pessimism about the country’s economic outlook as the Trump administration beats the drum for a trade war with Canada, Mexico, China and other countries,” the article details. “A major shadow over financial markets is the prospect of steep new U.S. tariffs on key trading partners scheduled to take effect on April 2. Those include 25% duties on U.S. imports from Mexico and Canada, as well as even more sweeping matching levies on a number of other countries.” 

“The size, speed and breadth of U.S. tariff hike announcements since January is staggering,” Brian Coulton, chief economist with Fitch Ratings, said in an email. The CBS News article further details, “The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development downgraded its forecast for U.S. and global growth, citing the risk of escalating trade disputes. Over the first three months of 2025, the country’s gross domestic product is growing at a rate of 1.2%, S&P Global Market Intelligence estimates. That is markedly slower than the 2.3% recorded in the final quarter of last year. For all of 2024, the economy grew 2.8% on the strength of healthy corporate earnings, frisky job growth and resilient consumer spending.”

Following the official implementation of the blanket tariffs on April 2, which Trump termed “Liberation Day,” the markets have reacted as expected, with brutally sharp declines. According to a recent CNN article, “The S&P 500 has lost over 15% of its value since Inauguration Day, and two-thirds of the fall have been since Liberation Day.” The losses in the financial markets due to blanket tariffs have surpassed even those during the 2008 financial crisis and the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The key difference in this instance is that these losses are self-imposed by President Trump, as according to the same CNN article, “He inherited a bull market, as the S&P 500 gained 23% in 2024.” Also, Trump is bringing into question manipulation of the financial markets and insider trading. Over the course of his second term, he has already implemented and rescinded blanket tariffs multiple times, causing enormous shocks to the financial markets.

On a local level, Trump’s tariffs will have potentially devastating impacts on New Mexico. According to a recent study by the Senate Finance Committee, “New Mexico is ranked second most vulnerable to tariffs and second most at risk for retaliatory tariffs. The state imported $2.5 billion from Mexico in 2023, alongside $3.61 billion of imports from China, Canada and India. New Mexico also exported $4.9 billion in goods globally in 2023, with $3.4 billion (70%) going to Mexico. Federal tariffs could reduce New Mexico GDP growth by up to 1.5%, according to the Tax Policy Center.” It is simply a fact that nearly every New Mexican’s economic situation will be tangibly worse due to these tariffs, and poverty and all of its consequences will be massively exacerbated. 

So, given this information, what are Trump’s motivations for issuing blanket tariffs? The more charitable reading would be the president sincerely, if foolishly, believes that it’s an effective tool to spur long-term domestic manufacturing and investment through short-term pain. However, there’s little evidence that the tariffs are being deployed for these ends, as the Trump administration has laid out zero plans to implement wide-scale domestic manufacturing across vast swaths of industry. Importantly, that would require massive government investment. The second reading would be that the Trump administration is attempting to intentionally destroy the American economy. Frankly, there is far more evidence pointing to the second reading than the first, and that should frighten virtually every American.

What is particularly remarkable about Trump’s seemingly intentional destruction of financial markets, which have lost trillions in value since his inauguration, is that his first term was largely centered around the success of the same financial markets. Many of the people who voted for Trump in 2024 expecting strong economic gains were likely harkening back to his first term, where the president consistently boasted of a record-high Dow Jones and S&P 500, extremely low inflation, low unemployment, low interest rates and continual GDP growth. However, Trump seems positively impervious to those metrics this time around, if not outright hostile. Which begs the question, “Why the change?” One would only be comfortable, even outright pleased, with sharply declining economic metrics if that was ultimately the goal.

This begs the question, why would Trump want to intentionally destroy the economy? When one examines what Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, have been doing since Inauguration Day, it becomes pretty clear. Under the guise of “eliminating waste, fraud and abuse,” Musk and his DOGE team have essentially taken a sledgehammer to the federal government, eliminating anything they don’t approve of on a whim. However, when one looks a little deeper, it becomes obvious that “eliminating waste, fraud and abuse” and making the government more efficient is merely a fig leaf for an entirely different agenda. According to data from the Treasury Department, federal spending in February stood at $603 billion. This stands in stark contrast to Musk’s claim of saving over $100 billion. While at the same time federal spending isn’t going down, Musk and Trump are eliminating entire departments of the government on a whim while also conducting mass layoffs of federal employees. Meanwhile, Musk is continuing to reward himself with enormous military contracts, something he doesn’t deem as wasteful or abusive of government funds.

When looking at the bigger picture, it becomes apparent that Musk and Trump are trying to destroy the federal government through wide-scale layoffs and make it completely unable to fulfill even basic functions. For example, Trump and Musk have laid off half of the staff of the Social Security Administration, and for the first time in the history of Social Security, senior citizens have started missing their checks. The plan here is obvious: to make people think that Social Security no longer functions and to transfer those funds into the private market, away from the federal government, where it can be raided by oligarchs. This is why members of the Trump administration have been spreading the widely debunked falsehood that people who have been dead for 50 years or more are still receiving Social Security checks. It’s simply a pretext to do what they want to do, which is eliminate Social Security altogether.

Given how brazenly Trump and Musk are destroying the administrative state, it is not far-fetched to view seemingly head-scratching economic decisions as a deliberate attempt to dismantle the American economy. After all, in the event of an extreme economic downturn, Musk, Trump and other extraordinarily wealthy individuals are the only people in society who stand to benefit in any form or fashion. 

We are currently witnessing the complete destruction of the American administrative state, America’s global standing and its economic power by a group of completely self-interested, megalomaniacal robber barons. This is no longer a hypothetical but an immediate reality. It’s safe to say that most Americans, no matter what they’re political persuasion, will not approve of that reality once it is actually presented to them in living, breathing terms. However, the first step is understanding what is actually happening. We are seeing the destruction of both the rule of law and the Constitution in real-time, and the real question is, “What comes next?” Americans have a true fight on their hands with their own government essentially performing a hostile takeover of its own population. If there’s anything that can shake Americans out of a sense of complacency, it will be the coming years of true economic and social upheaval. America has been through many tough times before, so we can certainly weather these as well if millions of Americans are willing to unite. That remains to be seen.