RUTHFULLY YOURS

So far, President Donald Trump has been piloting his second term like Maverick from “Top Gun.” With one exception. The tariff rollout has been FUBAR, which is troubling since it’s Trump’s signature economic policy issue.

There have been glaring missteps along the way, repeated pauses, confused and conflicting messaging, turf wars. It’s draining public support and causing real economic problems as businesses can’t make plans while all this is in flux.

We aren’t privy to insider gossip to speculate why this is. But we can say that Trump needs to get his tariff act together, and fast.

Consider what has transpired in just the past two weeks:

Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement turned out to be a disaster. Not just because an island inhabited only by penguins was listed as a trade abuser, but because it quickly became apparent that the math used to set tariff rates made no sense.

While Trump called the tariffs reciprocal, they weren’t. They were instead based on trade imbalances with other nations, which even Trump supporters pointed out is a flawed metric.

Then, less than a week later, Trump announced a 90-day pause on Liberation Day.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the pause was part of “his strategy all along,” but U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer testified at a House hearing that he wasn’t aware of the pause until after it was announced, CNN reported.

This past Friday, Trump announced that smartphones, laptops, and the like would be exempt from tariffs. Then, over the weekend, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that they were only temporary. And Trump on Sunday posted on Truth Social that “NOBODY is getting ‘off the hook. There was no Tariff ‘exception’ announced on Friday. These products are subject to the existing 20% Fentanyl Tariffs, and they are just moving to a different Tariff ‘bucket.’”

Forbes has counted eight flip-flops by the administration on tariffs and trade since Liberation Day.

Meanwhile, there’s news that two camps in the White House are fighting for dominance – team tariff, led by Peter Navarro, and team econ, led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Here’s how Semafor put it:

President Donald Trump’s economic advisers are becoming a team of rivals … Ask Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, and National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett about negotiating on tariffs, for example — and you’ll hear four different answers ….

The mixed messages point to fundamental disagreements within the administration about how to address trade deficits, according to more than a dozen lawmakers, lobbyists and analysts interviewed for this story. Trump’s advisers sound united behind the spirit of his trade agenda but far less aligned on its execution — differences driven by both personality and ideology.

When Trump announced the pause, the word went out that Navarro had been sidelined and Bessent was in the driver’s seat on trade. (Elon Musk called Navarro a “moron.”)

On Sunday, Navarro was on “Meet the Press” insisting that was not the case.

“I’m here. I’m here on ‘Meet the Press,’” Navarro replied. “I think you’d like to think this is the top show on Sunday.”

There’s nothing wrong with having leaders within an administration debating an issue. Such internal debates, in fact, are healthy and often lead to better policy proposals that can get more widespread support.

But why in the world are Trump’s advisers fighting over who will fly the plane and where it’s heading while it’s in flight when those decisions should have been made before it took off?

Trump can fix this. But he needs to take the controls, stop jerking the plane around, deal with the turbulence, and reassure everyone in the cabin with calm consistent messaging, and stay on target.

And quick. Before the passengers start fighting over the barf bags.