Trump thinks a trade deficit is a subsidy, which is like saying that if you buy a wheelbarrow from Home Hardware, you are subsidizing Home Hardware. Trump said the Great Depression never would have happened if the U.S. had stuck with tariff-based policy, though the Smoot-Hawley tariffs famously helped worsen the Great Depression.

“People have made comparisons to the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, which were also bad, but this tariff jump is higher, and the U.S. is three times as trade exposed now as they were in 1932,” says Milligan.

“We have lots of bad economic policy in the world, but we’ve never seen anything this amateur or purposely destructive at the national level from a G7 economy,” says Gillezeau. “I think that there are pretty reasonable odds they cast themselves into another Great Depression, right?”