Ask Lemmygrad

It is the result of competing US capital factions on how to maintain and expand the failing US hegemony. Trump's personal reasons may be argued as the incompetence in believing in US exceptionalism and even perceived beneficial bonuses such as stock insider-trading but if we are to move away from Great Man Theory we must ask why does the system allow him to do what he does?

Consider the opposite, what if Trump decided to create a dictatorship of the proleteriat (this is a thought exercise, not the presumption that Trump is a secret marxist)? The system including the reactionary masses would end it very quickly. It clearly does not do that with what's happening with the tariffs.

Tariffs in this context are a desperate measure where the end result is a tax on the domestic population to create state revenue along with attempts as bargaining chips (well outright brinkmanship), not just with the Global South with view to isolate and subjugate China, but also as political theater for domestic audience to create a convenient narrative for their bigotry (whether they agree with the tariffs or not, the US population is broadly sinophobic because of perceived material benefits) including to sell deepening austerity measures.

We may argue that they are hastening the self-destruction of the US and therefore cannot be "rational" but that argument could be made for capitalism in itself - we know it sows the seeds of its own destruction and yet it attempts to perservere.