What are you going to do, stab me?

Yes, actually you are going to be stabbed. Sometimes it is wise to pay attention to warnings offered for free.

As always, I am very grateful to you for reading The Debatable Land, more grateful still to those of you who have shared posts here with other people, and especially grateful to everyone who has upgraded to a paid subscription.

Actually, yes. Yes, I am going to stab you. At this point, is there really very much more that needs to be said about Donald Trump’s tariffs? Not really, I think, for an act of economic self-harm domestically and moronic malevolence internationally is precisely on-brand for Trump. He is doing what he said he would do and reminding us, once again, that the moral of the fable of The Boy Who Cried Wolf is that, in the end, THERE IS ALWAYS A WOLF.

Still, in the grand tradition of newspaper leader-columns, we should remember that the wounded are there to be bayoneted. And, my, there are so very many of them. To take just one example of yesterday’s Wall Street consensus: