The Translucents

Trump is not always transparent, he is more of a translucent - we might see the goal but how we get there tends to be a bit murky.

I've always been against tariffs - my past writing proves that, so one might ask why I am for them now.

Well, I'm not actually "for' them, I guess I've never seen, heard, or read about tariffs being used as a weapon in a mass attack on such a global scale before. I'm not sure there is an example in history of tariffs being used to completely break and rebuild the global markets in an attempt to reset it to a free/fair trade model.

The battle with China is the one to watch because China is the linchpin. China can withstand a 100% tariff - they probably could withstand a 400% tariff - but they are the key.

If Trump's plan breaks them, every other country will fall in line.

Trump is right about one thing - now is the time to do reshuffle the deck.

Early in my career, I worked in a company that exploded in growth through the rapid market acceptance of a specific product - we went from $12 million in revenue to over $150 million in about 5 years - it was fantastic until that one customer became 72% of our business and then we realized that customer functionally owned us.

Never has there been a more real world representation of the "he who pays the piper, calls the tune" rule.

That's us and China. The imbalance in how much we export to them (very little) versus how much they export to us (a lot) works in our favor.

I do believe the success of Trump's strategy depends on China folding.

I was looking back in past writings and discovered this I wrote about Trump in 2018:

Every president claims to run a “transparent” administration, that they and their cronies truly believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant – but they never do. President Obama, while claiming to run “the most transparent administration in history” (a direct quote, by the way) practiced the most deceptive, corrupt and opaque presidency since the Nixon administration was embroiled in the Watergate scandal. Enabled by the mainstream media, Obama prosecuted leakers with reckless abandon and sought to clamp down on any media member who dared to cross him (James Rosen), investigate him (Sharyl Attkisson) or any outlet that deigned to ask him difficult questions (Fox News).

Trump has been lauded by some as the most transparent president. I’m not sure that is completely true, but when the media reports every incidence of flatulence of every official and then assigns nefarious intent to the gaseous emissions – and this administration has more leaks than a $100 sailboat, his transparency isn’t as much intentional as it is consequential. This transparency follows as a result of every progressive media scalp hunter wanting to win the Pulitzer for bringing Trump down like Woodward and Bernstein did Nixon.

But Trump himself, as conservatives have recently experienced (and something we warned about during the GOP primaries) is not transparent. Trump is one of the Translucents, people who seem to generally go in a certain direction but you (and most of the time, they) are never sure about the specifics until the eleventh hour. Translucents tend to be big - yet undisciplined - thinkers, they see the destination first – they go from A to Z at lightspeed without really thinking (or caring) about any of the letters in between – those are details to be filled in later.

A perfect example of this was the President’s Underpants Gnome comment (gratuitous South Park reference) about guns, the mentally ill and due process. Translucents are also often very effective negotiators, the gauzy perception they promote makes them especially efficient at camouflaging and preserving any number of possible strategies while keeping their eyes on the prize.

Dealing with them can be maddening for friend and foe alike.

It’s almost impossible to judge a Translucent on what is said or done at any given time in the middle of a battle, but it has been my experience that they usually achieve the goals they set, just sometimes not in the way most people expect – and sometimes not even in the way they intend. These are people you must evaluate at the end of a process, not in the middle.

I’m not saying that we can’t or shouldn’t judge President Trump on his words – but I have run across folks like him in my life and learned that it is a mistake to jump to conclusions too early in the process.

What is fairly common in the business world is not something we have seen in the Oval office – most presidents struggle to be transparently opaque – Trump doesn’t know how to do that.

That is not who he is. He is the King of the Underpants Gnomes.