Trump and the Magaverse

Welcome to the Magaverse – a parallel economic universe where imports equal weakness, deficits are enemies, and protectionism is salvation!

Since his campaign, Trump has been clear that tariffs would be his go-to economic weapon. So, it came as no surprise when he unleashed an arsenal of tariffs against America’s key trading partners and allies. What few could have predicted, though, was the madness that followed. In the first six months of Trump’s second term, Tariffs were rolled out, raised, suspended, renegotiated, and in some cases, paused more than once — a dizzying cycle that blurred the line between policy and performance, or surrealism.

Since 2016, countless op-eds and papers have labelled Trump as ignorant for failing to understand that tariffs won’t fix deficits. At this point, I find it naive to think he doesn’t have access to information. The real story? It’s far easier to promise to fix the trade deficit than to explain how global finance works, or why a strong dollar and Americans’ appetite for imported goods or low savings create that deficit in the first place. Imagine running on a platform of “reducing current account deficits caused by capital account inflows due to the dollar’s reserve currency status.” Good luck winning votes with that slogan. Instead, Trump boils down the macroeconomic problem to something everyone can understand: America’s loss from trade.

In this parallel economic universe, the Magaverse, imports are viewed as a weakness and a loss. And few things hit the American psyche harder than the idea that someone, or an entire country, is a loser. But in the real world, rising imports often signal an increase in purchasing power. Higher income also means having access to a greater variety of goods and services. Think of your own wallet: if you got a significant raise, you’d likely spend more on things you previously couldn’t afford. You might even want to pay others to do tasks you no longer wish to handle yourself. That’s also how trade works.

Yet in the Magaverse, another logic prevails. This parallel reality borrows some bits from the old mercantilist playbook: if one country wins, the other must lose. Therefore, if another country is producing what used to be made in the US, it must mean that foreigners have taken away those jobs at the expense of Americans. Need more proof of the Magaverse? Look no further than Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick’s surreal statement suggesting that many of these jobs must return to the United States and that “an army of millions and millions of Americans putting screws into an iPhone” is the new American dream.

When a person in the Midwest sees that everything they buy is now “Made in China,” and that the factories they knew in their childhood, which supported the local economy, were shut down, it makes perfect sense to protect American industries through tariffs. For that person, it’s irrelevant that the US has a surplus in something as invisible as the digital economy. Don’t forget the golden rule of politics: perception is reality. And Trump knows that fiction sells.

In the Magaverse, what matters is the tale, not the results. Unlike old-school mercantilists, there’s no grand theory here, just a vacuum left by the collapse of the liberal order and faith in the promise that hard work leads to prosperity, or what Michael Sander calls the liberal providentialism. When that economic system of thought collapsed, people were left to fend for themselves and at the mercy of their fate. And when everything feels untethered, and there’s no longer economic certainty or moral anchor, what’s left?  It seems, as in many comics, only a millionaire with superpowers can come to the rescue.

Like an anti-hero straight out of a story book, Trump lets people off the hook. It’s not your fault, he says—it’s theirs, the foreigners, the others. And now, with tariffs, we’ll make them pay. And, though this economic storyline seems to be winning the day, it’s worth remembering that the Magaverse’s economic premises aren’t rooted in reality. While the principles underpinning international trade, as the comparative advantage, have been a robust explanation for international trade over the past two centuries, Trump’s principles –if he has any– are slashed even by himself, every time he walks back from imposing a tariff.

A few weeks ago, a Mexican columnist posed the question: Is Trump a cold-blooded strategist or just a brilliant opportunist? Like him, I lean toward the former. The Magaverse and its narrative are far too precise, too politically potent, to be accidental. This anti-hero (or villain?) knows perfectly that it’s easier and cheaper to sell the fiction of protectionism than to invest in the real tools of competitiveness: education, health, and innovation. Shielding people and industries from global trade may feel comforting in the short term, but it’s a double-edged sword. Tariffs might help in very specific cases, but widespread protectionism always comes at a price. Spoiler alert: the most vulnerable will be the ones who pay.

Despite the gloomy outlook, and to quote the civil rights giant Martin Luther King Jr., I also believe that “the arc of History always bends towards justice” (perhaps I’m the one who’s living in a fiction). Sooner or later, fiction collides with reality. And when Americans finally cross from the portal of the Magaverse to the real world, they’ll find an economy that’s more closed, more expensive, and, as current data already shows, offering a lower quality of life and shorter life expectancy. Maybe then, they’ll remember one of their country’s most emblematic maxims: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country. The hero dwells inside us. The challenge, and my greatest fear, is that this awakening may not be peaceful in a nation armed to the teeth.