Summary
White House aides are anxious ahead of Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement on Tuesday, expecting new “reciprocal tariffs” but lacking clear details.
Even key figures like VP J.D. Vance and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles remain uncertain. An insider told Politico, “No one knows what the f–k is going on.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and adviser Kevin Hassett said tariffs would target 10–15 countries, but Trump contradicted them, claiming all countries would face tariffs.
The confusion and internal contradictions have sparked fears of economic fallout and political backlash.
It could look identical to the original. Restore the capital gains and high-income tax rates. Do all the infrastructure investments over again with modern tech (high speed and light rail, renewable energy, desalination, etc)
Fair labor standards 2.0, with 32 hour workweek, guaranteed leave, triple the minimum wage, and medicare for all. The last one should save small business more than enough money and administrative overhead to pay for the rest, but tax incentives for small businesses will help too.
Reinforce the national labor relations and social security acts. Create the political transparency act to overturn citizens united. Throw out the parties and the political bribery entirely if you can, if you can’t, limit and publicize it. Tax 1-5% of all political donations over X dollars, and feed all of it into social security and medicare. All of federal legislature, executive, and judiciary now gets their salary from social security and their healthcare from medicare.
This wouldn’t really save the world, but it should be enough to keep the US going until we find better answers. Obviously there’s no guarantees we could find the political capital to get any of this done, even in the Great Depression 2: electric boogaloo.