I saw a brilliant cartoon the other day which had America’s founding fathers sitting around a table writing up the country’s constitution - and they had agreed that the US wouldn’t have a king, but they were thinking about having a drama queen instead.  

And after what we saw overnight, I think it would be pretty hard to argue that the current US president is anything but a drama queen. He’s also an economic vandal.  

Donald Trump has announced that he’s pausing his global trade tariffs for 90 days for most countries, but upping the ante with China. Increasing the tariff on Chinese goods going into the United States to 125%.  

And as Chinese political scientist Shi Yihong is saying today, this is going to mean that trade between China and the US will be “mostly destroyed”.  

American economist Arthur Kroeber agrees, saying that what’s happening right now shows that Trump is committed to ending US trade with China.  

Which equates in my mind to one thing: economic vandalism.   

And if you want proof, consider what America’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is saying. He says this flip-flop was Trump's plan all along  

He says: “This was his strategy all along, and that you might even say that he goaded China into a bad position and they responded. They have shown themselves to the world to be the bad actors, and we are willing to cooperate with our allies and with our trading partners who did not retaliate. It wasn’t a hard message: don’t retaliate, things will turn out well.”  

How chilling is that?   

If Trump planned this all along, it shows how comfortable he is causing economic chaos around the world.  

Maybe that shouldn’t surprise me. Which is why I mentioned that cartoon earlier. All this tariff stuff has been the work of a drama queen, but I reckon that this development overnight takes things next level.  

When we’ve got the head of the Treasury in the States saying that this was Trump’s plan all along —to slap countries with tariffs, see which ones retaliate, and then give the countries which don't retaliate some sort of 90-day “get out of jail card”— it's economic vandalism.  

It’s clear now too that Donald Trump wants the world to cower in fear of him.  

And it’s working. Not that I expect or want our government to go ape at him and his administration, because I don’t think that would achieve anything, but the careful language we’re hearing from the likes of Nicola Willis shows that even our government is walking on eggshells.  

Back in November, when Trump won the presidential election, political commentator Matthew Hooton said the US was entering “its most dangerous period since 1861, the start of the civil war” and that the world was entering its most dangerous phase since World War II.  

He said back in November: “The world enters its most dangerous period since World War II, with Trump threatening to launch a global trade war and collapse the World Trade Organisation.”  

Matthew Hooton said that during his last term, Trump had at least some people in his circle who could be relied on to keep his most extreme tendencies in check.  

He said: “There are no such people around him this time. Nor is he constrained by the need to worry about re-election.” Hence, his conclusion that we were entering very dangerous times.  

And I think maybe he’s turned out be right.  

And I’m starting to think that maybe I was wrong. Because when I read his article in the NZ Herald I said that, on the basis of the world not falling apart last time he was president, I wasn’t going to buy into the hysteria.   

I did say I could be proven wrong. And going by the way the world looks today, I may have just been proven wrong.