WASHINGTON (AP) — After President Donald Trump reversed course on his tariffs and announced he would pursue trade negotiations, he had a simple explanation for how he would make decisions in the coming weeks.
“Instinctively, more than anything else,” he told reporters this past week. “You almost can’t take a pencil to paper, it’s really more of an instinct than anything else.”
It was the latest example of how Trump loves to keep everyone on edge for his next move. Trump has not only expansively flexed the powers of the presidency by declaring emergencies and shredding political norms, he has eschewed traditional deliberative procedures for making decisions. The result is that more of life around the country and the world is subject to the president’s desires, moods and grievances than ever before.
“We have a democratic leader who seems to have the authority to act as whimsically as a 19th century European autocrat,” said Tim Naftali, a historian and senior research scholar at Columbia University. “He sneezes and everyone catches a cold.”
The White House rejects criticism that Trump is overstepping his authority or improperly consolidating power. Administration officials frequently emphasize that the Republican president won a clear election victory and is now pursuing the agenda that he campaigned on. In this view, resisting his will, such as when courts block his executive orders, is the real threat to democracy.
“Trust in President Trump,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Friday while answering questions about economic policy. “He knows what he’s doing.”
The presidency has been accumulating power for years, long before Trump ran for office, and it is not unusual for administrations to veer in various directions based on political and policy priorities. But Trump’s new term has been different in the early months, and he seems to recognize it.
“The second term is just more powerful,” Trump marveled recently. “When I say ‘do it,’ they do it.”
Although international trade offers the most extensive example of Trump’s inclination to act unilaterally since he returned to office in January the same approach has been evident elsewhere.
He installed himself as chair of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to overhaul programming at Washington’s premier cultural institution. He issued an order to purge “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution’s network of museums. He punished law firms associated with his opponents. He directed the Justice Department to investigate former officials who crossed him during his first term.
When Trump decided to remove regulations on household water efficiency — he wants more water flowing in showers — his executive order said the normal public comment period “is unnecessary because I am ordering the repeal.”
“What the president ends up having is what he wants, which is everyone’s attention all of the time,” Naftali said.
Trump’s ambitions stretch beyond the United States, such as his goal of annexing Greenland. Vice President JD Vance visited the island last month to talk about its strategic location in the Arctic, where Russia and China want to expand their influence, but also its importance to Trump himself.
“We can’t just ignore the president’s desires,” Vance said.
Trump has spent decades trying to turn his impulses into reality, whether it’s skyscrapers in Manhattan or casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He once sued a journalist for allegedly underestimating his net worth. During a deposition, Trump said “it goes up and down with the markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings.”
A lawyer for the journalist appeared puzzled. “You said your net worth goes up and down based upon your own feelings?”
Trump said yes. “I would say it’s my general attitude at the time that the question may be asked.”
He took a similar approach into the White House for his first term. While talking about the economy with The Washington Post, Trump said “my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me.”
Leon Panetta, who was White House chief of staff under Democratic President Bill Clinton and later served in national security roles for Democratic President Barack Obama, said there normally is a more deliberative process for critical issues.
“If you throw all of that out of the window and operate based on gut instincts, what you’re doing is making every decision a huge gamble,” Panetta said. “Because you just haven’t done the homework to really understand all of the implications.”
“When you roll dice,” he added, “sometimes it’s going to come up snake eyes.”
Because Trump does not have a clear process for making decisions, Panetta said “that means everybody has to kowtow to him because that’s the only way you’re going to have any impact.”
Trump has seemed to enjoy that aspect of the ongoing controversy over tariffs. During a Republican dinner this past week, he said foreign leaders were “kissing my ass” to talk him out of his trade agenda.
The saga began on April 2 when Trump declared that trade deficits — when the U.S. buys more products from some countries than it sells — represented a national emergency, enabling him to enact tariffs without congressional approval.
The stock market collapsed and then the bond market began to slide. On Wednesday, Trump backed off his plans.
Although high taxes have been left in place on imports from China, many of the other targeted tariffs have been paused for 90 days to allow time for negotiations with individual countries.
“Americans should trust in that process,” said Leavitt, the press secretary.
Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics at the conservative Cato Institute, expressed concern that the course of international trade was becoming dependent on the “whims of a single dude in the Oval Office.”
Lincicome said the White House timeline to reach trade deals was “not credible” given the complexity of the issues. A more likely scenario, he said, is that the resulting agreements will be nothing more than “superficial nothingburgers” and Trump will ”declare a great victory and all this stuff settles down.”
Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade adviser, said in an interview with Fox Business Network that there’s “a whole portion of our White House working day and night” on negotiations.
“We’re going to run 90 deals in 90 days,” he said. “It’s possible.”
