Renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs launched a scathing attack on Donald Trump‘s tariff strategy, calling the US president’s trade policies so “delusional” that even Mickey Mouse would know better.
Not mincing any words, Sachs delivered a harsh critique of Donald Trump’s trade policies, declaring that Trump’s understanding of trade is so fundamentally flawed that “he wouldn’t pass a basic economics class.”
He condemned the president’s fixation on trade deficits as both “childish and dangerous.”
Sachs attributed a staggering $10 trillion loss in global wealth to Trump’s economic strategies and cautioned that the United States is edging toward authoritarianism, characterised by “one-man rule by emergency decree.”
Rejecting Trump’s accusations that other countries are “cheating” the US, Sachs argued that the real issue is not trade but excessive US government spending.
Speaking at a public forum, Sachs recounted Trump’s justification for levying tariffs on countries like Lesotho. “What Trump said was, ‘Lesotho sells us more than we buy from them, so they’re cheating us.’ That is literally what he said,” Sachs explained. “It’s completely delusional.”
According to Sachs, Trump’s team then scrambled to create a formula to impose tariffs on countries like Lesotho based purely on the trade imbalance. “They made some absolutely stupid formula that you would not accept in a first-year, third-week economics class. It came out of the US Trade Representative’s office. They probably were told, ‘Do it overnight, the boss wants it,’” he said.
Sachs described the result as a list of tariffs calculated on a country-by-country basis, an approach he deemed utterly senseless. “You cannot make this stuff up,” he said. “This used to be not a Mickey Mouse country, my country. But this is Mickey Mouse. And I apologise to Mickey Mouse—he would not do this. Mickey Mouse is smarter than this.”
Sachs, a long-time critic of both political parties’ failure to tackle inequality, accused Trump of selling “a pseudo explanation” and “a pseudo remedy” for economic discontent. “What Trump is doing is giving a story to swing states like Michigan and Ohio—it’s China’s fault, it’s Mexico’s fault, it’s Lesotho’s fault.”
He also pointed out that the loss of manufacturing jobs in the American Midwest was driven more by automation than trade. “Now if you go to an automotive plant, it’s all robots,” Sachs said. “That’s not because the jobs went overseas—it’s because the assembly line itself became an automated phenomenon.”
On broader global challenges, Sachs expressed alarm at Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement and promote coal. “Yesterday, King Donald issued an executive decree to bring back coal. It’s willful destruction of wellbeing. Willful,” he said, adding that the rest of the world must avoid entering what he called “crazy land.”
The President has claimed tariffs are a powerful tool for economic leverage. Earlier this month, he announced sweeping new tariffs on almost all trading partners, only to reverse most of them a week later after a market downturn. “We’re making a fortune with tariffs. $2 billion a day. Do you believe it?” Trump said at a recent Republican event.
However, official figures tell a different story. According to US Customs and Border Protection, the actual figure collected from customs duties is just over $260 million per day. Despite Trump’s claims, the real economic benefit of his tariff policies appears far less significant than he suggests.
