Paul Buckingham - Blog Philosophy and life in general

Caligula was not alone in the pantheon of insane Roman emperors, but stands out for his cruelty, megalomania, and bizarre behaviour. This included declaring himself a god and attempting to make his horse a consul.

Unsurprisingly, his behaviour made him seriously unpopular among Rome's elite. Plots against his life became commonplace and in 41 AD, four months after he returned from Gaul, he was murdered by his closest advisors. He had been emperor for 4 years.

The question now arises: was he perhaps a Trump ancestor? Trump too has a period in office of four years – spooky - and although his misogyny is not quite as extreme as that of his ancestor, he certainly demonstrates all of Caligula’s qualities together with the baseless rage and the narcissism for which he has become famous.

And I would suggest that the appointment of Musk as Doge is the equivalent of the appointment of the horse as consul. Musk has been as irrational as a horse would be in finding efficiency savings - he’s just knocked things over without any idea what they were there for in the first place.

Will Trump’s appalling character defects be his undoing? Surely such irrationality cannot win the day? As the editorial in the Economist said the other day:

“If you failed to spot America being “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far” or it being cruelly denied a “turn to prosper”, then congratulations: you have a firmer grip on reality than the president of the United States. It’s hard to know which is more unsettling: that the leader of the free world could spout complete drivel about its most successful and admired economy. Or the fact that on April 2nd, spurred on by his delusions, Donald Trump announced the biggest break in America’s trade policy in over a century—and committed the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era.”

Speaking in the Rose Garden of the White House, the president announced new “reciprocal” tariffs on all America’s trading partners. The only countries missed out were Russia and North Korea.

Donald Trump emerged to give his speech on tariffs, walking past a small crowd of sycophants, with American flags draped between White House pillars in front of a necessarily small crowd of MAGA supporters. One of the supporters was invited to tell us that he had seen American decline at first hand, with the closing of so many factories.

Then came the main event – Trump holding a large piece of cardboard showing those with excellent eyesight which countries would be subject to tariffs, what tariffs they were imposing on America and what tariffs America would therefore impose on them.

“My fellow Americans, this is liberation day,” Trump said in what he no doubt intended as an echo of the day of Independence, although whether July 4, 1776 or the film, when the USA liberated the world from aliens from outer space, I’d be hard-pressed to say. “April 2, 2025 will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn.”

America is actually a place of immeasurable wealth. It is the richest country in the world. And yet its leader acts like a sulking adolescent on the world stage, constantly talking about how mean everyone is and how horrible everyone has been to it.

The numbers on the chart were pure nonsense. It stated that Vietnam had a 90 per cent tariff on US goods. It does not. It stated that Japan has a 46 per cent tariff on US goods. Obviously, it does not.

The administration claimed that the numbers represented tariff rates and non-tariff barriers. But they don’t. The true explanation was very quickly worked out. Trump’s team appears to have taken the US’s trade deficit with a given country and divided it by that country’s exports.

For example, the US has a $17.9bn trade deficit with Indonesia and Indonesian exports to the US are $28bn. So they divided 17.9 by 28, got 0.64 and presented it as a 64 per cent tariff on American goods. Trump has then divided that by two in order to arrive at a tariff to be imposed on Indonesia of 32%. Why, I’ve no idea. It’s hard to overstate the irrationality of that approach.

But the impact of this nonsense will be real enough, for everyone. Prices in the US will surge upwards, whether for status items manufactured in China and India, such as Apple smartphones or low value goods. Imports from those countries will be subject to respectively a 34 per cent tariff and a 26 per cent tariff, according to Trump’s random number generator.

With a 10% baseline tariff for the whole world, including we assume the exports of guano from the penguins on Heard Island, there will be a general price increase which will result in workers demanding higher wages, so triggering an increase in inflation. If other countries follow the example of Canada and the EU and impose reciprocal tariffs (bad idea – why would we self-harm?), then the US economy will be directly hit.

Trump wants to do individual trade deals with countries and so justify the initial imposition of tariffs, but there are so many countries which are affected (all of us) that actually doing so will take decades. This is partly because trade deals require complex rules-of-origin agreements which define where a good came from or how much of it came from the country doing the deal. Mr Trump needs to stop third-country products sneaking in with the products actually made by companies based in his new, best friend, trading partner.

Indeed, it was just such a possibility, we are told by Trump’s people, that meant that tariffs had to be imposed on the penguins - you can’t trust penguins.

Now I wouldn’t expect Trump to have read Adam Smith’s ‘The Wealth of Nations’, published in the same year as the Declaration of Independence, but I would expect him to talk to people who have. They might have understood why tariffs are such a bad idea. But no, the high-tariff, low-income-tax era of the late-19th century has long been his obsession. And in his Rose Garden peroration he told us that removing tariffs caused the Depression of the 1930s and that the Smoot-Hawley tariffs (introduced in 1929) were too late to rescue the situation.

The reality is that tariffs made the Depression much worse, just as they will harm all economies today. Trump though sees America’s trade deficit as a transfer of wealth to foreigners - even though the Americans have, in exchange, the goods they bought which caused the monetary outflow.

As the Economist leader points out, “Insisting on balanced trade with every trading partner individually is bonkers—like suggesting that Texas would be richer if it insisted on balanced trade with each of the other 49 states”

But what do I see coming over the hill? Is it enlightened self-interest? Elon Musk has now called for tariffs between the EU and USA to be set at 0%. Before the Rose Garden statement, they were in fact very close to that: between 1.4% and 1.7%. And now Bill Ackman, a hedge-fund billionaire and major Trump supporter, has said on X:

“...by placing massive and disproportionate tariffs on our friends and our enemies alike and thereby launching a global economic war against the whole world at once, we are in the process of destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner, as a place to do business, and as a market to invest capital...”

No doubt Ackman believed in the much quoted idea that ‘you should take Trump seriously, but not literally’. Now that everyone can see that he should be taken literally as well, I have to hope that more oligarchs will put pressure on Trump to change course. Although I’m not calling for them to copy the actions of Caligula’s closest advisors, surely what he has done so far is sufficient to have him taken away by men in white coats? Please?!

7 April 2025

Paul Buckingham

	Trump - a descendant of Caligula?

	Caligula was not alone in the pantheon of insane Roman emperors, but stands out for his cruelty, megalomania, and bizarre behaviour. This included declaring himself a god and attempting to make his horse a consul. Unsurprisingly, his behaviour made him seriously unpopular among Rome's elite. Plots against his life became commonplace and in 41 AD, four months after he returned from Gaul, he was murdered by his closest advisors. He had been emperor for 4 years. The question now arises: was he perhaps a Trump ancestor? Trump too has a period in office of four years – spooky - and although his misogyny is not quite as extreme as that of his ancestor, he certainly demonstrates all of Caligula’s qualities together with the baseless rage and the narcissism for which he has become famous. And I would suggest that the appointment of Musk as Doge is the equivalent of the appointment of the horse as consul. Musk has been as irrational as a horse would be in finding efficiency savings - he’s just knocked things over without any idea what they were there for in the first place. Will Trump’s appalling character defects be his undoing? Surely such irrationality cannot win the day? As the editorial in the Economist said the other day: “If you failed to spot America being “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far” or it being cruelly denied a “turn to prosper”, then congratulations: you have a firmer grip on reality than the president of the United States. It’s hard to know which is more unsettling: that the leader of the free world could spout complete drivel about its most successful and admired economy. Or the fact that on April 2nd, spurred on by his delusions, Donald Trump announced the biggest break in America’s trade policy in over a century—and committed the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era.” Speaking in the Rose Garden of the White House, the president announced new “reciprocal” tariffs on all America’s trading partners. The only countries missed out were Russia and North Korea. Donald Trump emerged to give his speech on tariffs, walking past a small crowd of sycophants, with American flags draped between White House pillars in front of a necessarily small crowd of MAGA supporters. One of the supporters was invited to tell us that he had seen American decline at first hand, with the closing of so many factories. Then came the main event – Trump holding a large piece of cardboard showing those with excellent eyesight which countries would be subject to tariffs, what tariffs they were imposing on America and what tariffs America would therefore impose on them. “My fellow Americans, this is liberation day,” Trump said in what he no doubt intended as an echo of the day of Independence, although whether July 4, 1776 or the film, when the USA liberated the world from aliens from outer space, I’d be hard-pressed to say. “April 2, 2025 will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn.” America is actually a place of immeasurable wealth. It is the richest country in the world. And yet its leader acts like a sulking adolescent on the world stage, constantly talking about how mean everyone is and how horrible everyone has been to it. The numbers on the chart were pure nonsense. It stated that Vietnam had a 90 per cent tariff on US goods. It does not. It stated that Japan has a 46 per cent tariff on US goods. Obviously, it does not. The administration claimed that the numbers represented tariff rates and non-tariff barriers. But they don’t. The true explanation was very quickly worked out. Trump’s team appears to have taken the US’s trade deficit with a given country and divided it by that country’s exports. For example, the US has a $17.9bn trade deficit with Indonesia and Indonesian exports to the US are $28bn. So they divided 17.9 by 28, got 0.64 and presented it as a 64 per cent tariff on American goods. Trump has then divided that by two in order to arrive at a tariff to be imposed on Indonesia of 32%. Why, I’ve no idea. It’s hard to overstate the irrationality of that approach. But the impact of this nonsense will be real enough, for everyone. Prices in the US will surge upwards, whether for status items manufactured in China and India, such as Apple smartphones or low value goods. Imports from those countries will be subject to respectively a 34 per cent tariff and a 26 per cent tariff, according to Trump’s random number generator. With a 10% baseline tariff for the whole world, including we assume the exports of guano from the penguins on Heard Island, there will be a general price increase which will result in workers demanding higher wages, so triggering an increase in inflation. If other countries follow the example of Canada and the EU and impose reciprocal tariffs (bad idea – why would we self-harm?), then the US economy will be directly hit. Trump wants to do individual trade deals with countries and so justify the initial imposition of tariffs, but there are so many countries which are affected (all of us) that actually doing so will take decades. This is partly because trade deals require complex rules-of-origin agreements which define where a good came from or how much of it came from the country doing the deal. Mr Trump needs to stop third-country products sneaking in with the products actually made by companies based in his new, best friend, trading partner. Indeed, it was just such a possibility, we are told by Trump’s people, that meant that tariffs had to be imposed on the penguins - you can’t trust penguins. Now I wouldn’t expect Trump to have read Adam Smith’s ‘The Wealth of Nations’, published in the same year as the Declaration of Independence, but I would expect him to talk to people who have. They might have understood why tariffs are such a bad idea. But no, the high-tariff, low-income-tax era of the late-19th century has long been his obsession. And in his Rose Garden peroration he told us that removing tariffs caused the Depression of the 1930s and that the Smoot-Hawley tariffs (introduced in 1929) were too late to rescue the situation. The reality is that tariffs made the Depression much worse, just as they will harm all economies today. Trump though sees America’s trade deficit as a transfer of wealth to foreigners - even though the Americans have, in exchange, the goods they bought which caused the monetary outflow. As the Economist leader points out, “Insisting on balanced trade with every trading partner individually is bonkers—like suggesting that Texas would be richer if it insisted on balanced trade with each of the other 49 states” But what do I see coming over the hill? Is it enlightened self-interest? Elon Musk has now called for tariffs between the EU and USA to be set at 0%. Before the Rose Garden statement, they were in fact very close to that: between 1.4% and 1.7%. And now Bill Ackman, a hedge-fund billionaire and major Trump supporter, has said on X: “...by placing massive and disproportionate tariffs on our friends and our enemies alike and thereby launching a global economic war against the whole world at once, we are in the process of destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner, as a place to do business, and as a market to invest capital...” No doubt Ackman believed in the much quoted idea that ‘you should take Trump seriously, but not literally’. Now that everyone can see that he should be taken literally as well, I have to hope that more oligarchs will put pressure on Trump to change course. Although I’m not calling for them to copy the actions of Caligula’s closest advisors, surely what he has done so far is sufficient to have him taken away by men in white coats? Please?! 7 April 2025 Paul Buckingham
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