This makes a lot of sense. More than anything else so far anyway:
Trump is following Herbert Hoover’s playbook that caused the Great Depression. The Question is Why?!
-Dean Obeidallah, March 4
CNBC’s Jim Cramer warned two weeks ago that Donald Trump was “manufacturing” a recession with his potential massive tariffs. As Cramer correctly explained, history books tell us that the massive tariffs imposed in 1930 known as “Smoot Hawley” by GOP President Herbert Hoover “was a direct cause of the of the Depression.”
Even in the classic 1986 comedy film “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” the teacher played by Ben Stein famously referenced the devastating impact of that tariff to his students, asking: “Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects?” He then added, “It did not work, and the United States sank deeper into the Great Depression."
As a quick reminder, after the Oct. 1929 stock market crash, GOP President Hoover proposed massive tariffs by way of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. Economists urged Hoover and the GOP not to do this, warning with the slowing economy it would exacerbate the economic decline.
But Hoover ignored the advice of experts and on June 17, 1930, he signed the law. In response, our nation’s trading partners imposed retaliatory tariffs. Next Wall Street lost confidence. Soon banks failed and the US descended into one of the worst economic calamities known.
When Hoover came into office in the 1929, unemployment was at 4.4%–almost identical to what it was when Trump took office in January. By the time Hoover left office four years later, unemployment had risen to 23.6%.
Trump and his economic advisors know this. Yet they have chosen to follow Herbert Hoover’s tariff playbook that caused the US to sink into the worst economic crisis in our history. And worse, Trump is also massively cutting government spending and firing 200,000 federal government workers.
You don’t need a PhD in Economics to understand that when an economy is slowing, cutting federal spending, causing massive layoffs and wildly increasing taxes by way of tariffs are a recipe for financial disaster.
The only question is why is Trump intentionally doing this?!
Let’s take a step back before we answer that. It’s important to note that before Trump was sworn in, forecasts for the 2025 economy were “universally solid.” The Federal Reserve and economists predicted the economy in 2025 would grow by 2.3% to 2.7% this year.
Unemployment in January 2025 was a very low 4%, inflation was dropping and consumer confidence was solid. The stock market in December 2024 had just hit new highs with the Dow closing over 45,000 and the NASDAQ breaking 20,000.
Then came Trump. In just the 75 days Trump has been in office, he has caused devastation to our economy and ignited a global trade war. The stock market has crashed—with Dow dropping from 45,000 in December to 39,000 and the NASDAQ plummeting from more than 20,000 to 16,000–wiping out big chunks of America’s nest eggs and retirement accounts.
We just learned that job layoffs in March spiked to the third-highest ever recorded with more than 275,240 job cuts. A few weeks ago, consumer confidence dropped to the lowest levels in 12 years as Americans have grown increasingly concerned with inflation and the loss of jobs.
And the projections of solid economic growth for 2025 have been replaced with JP Morgan announcing Friday morning that there is now a 60% chance that the US will be in a recession by the end of the year. In fact, JP Morgan is warning we could see a global recession–all tied to Trump’s tariffs which have as expected prompted retaliatory duties from our once close trading partners.
None of this happens if Trump did not intentionally cause it. So we again get to the question: Why?
Well callers to my radio show—as well as when I posed this question online—overwhelmingly responded that Trump is doing this because he is a “Russian asset.” His goal is to “Make Russia Great Again” at the expense of the United States. Many noted while Trump imposed tariffs on just about every country except Russia.
Potentially backing that theory up was my interview in October of former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, author of what became known as the “Steele dossier.” When I asked Steele if he was concerned Russian intelligence had material to blackmail Trump, he responded, “Absolutely.”
Steele—who was stationed in the Soviet Union for Britain’s MI5—continued that "it’s clear that Trump was quite heavily engaged with Russia in the period before he entered really active politics.” He noted, “The thing about Russian intelligence is they never forget anything. They never lose anything. They have a very patient approach to these things.” He concluded with this truth, “It’s difficult to explain why Trump has only really been consistent about one thing in politics, which is that he won’t criticize Putin.”
The other theory raised by many was that Trump knows if there is a recession, he and his wealthy donors like Elon Musk—plus billionaire cabinet members-- will make a killing. As studies back up, the rich get richer in times of economic strife because they have the cash to swoop in like vultures to buy depressed assets—be it stocks, troubled businesses or even your home.
Then there was the most chilling reason, best summed up by Democratic Senator Chris Murphy in a long post online Wednesday night. Murphy wrote, “Those trying to understand the tariffs as economic policy are dangerously naive.” Rather, “the tariffs are a tool to collapse our democracy.”
Murphy then laid out how Trump would use the tariffs to gain more power, writing, “one by one, every industry or company will need to pledge loyalty to Trump in order to get sanctions relief.” In exchange, companies will be required by Trump to “police” employees to silence criticism of Trump and he would demand “contributions to his political efforts.”
As Murphy warned, “Trump didn’t invent this strategy. It’s the playbook for democratically elected leaders who want to stay in power forever.”
Sen. Murphy is correct that Trump wants to stay in office forever. As I keep repeating: Trump will never leave office alive.
While we can debate the “why” behind Trump tanking our economy, I can say with complete confidence that Trump is not motivated by helping we, the people. He only cares what is good for him. After all, despite the economic turmoil, Trump flew to Florida on Thursday to play golf at the Saudi Arabian backed LIV tournament being held at his country club.
At this point, causing an economic collapse serves Trump’s agenda. The question is how long will Americans stand for this?!