Only 10 weeks into his presidency, President Trump’s appetite for risk seems to know few bounds.
He imposed sweeping global tariffs on Wednesday, despite fears of inflation or, worse, stagflation. Yet the man who propelled himself to the presidency as a hard-nosed deal maker sounded cavalier last weekend when asked if he was worried the price of cars could surge.
“I couldn’t care less,” Mr. Trump replied.
It was the latest example of his willingness to take a maximalist position, essentially daring his opponents to take him on. Before the tariffs announcement, he moved to blow up a global alliance system the United States spent 80 years building embassy by embassy, silencing Voice of America and mostly removing the government from the business of providing food and medical aid.
Mr. Trump is more than willing to test the boundaries of a 250-year-old democracy to retaliate against perceived enemies or eviscerate parts of the federal government, even if that means risking the public health system or ignoring due process for immigrants living in the country legally.
And faced with daily competition with China over artificial intelligence, space and biological sciences, he is happy to risk cutting off funding to America’s largest research universities.
To outsiders, including the more than 200,000 Chinese students studying in the United States, those public and private institutions are the sparkling diamond at the heart of American innovation. To Mr. Trump, they represent what he has called “radical leftist” ideology that he is determined to bring to heel.
The president’s aides brush off the idea that they are jettisoning expertise or risking the incubators of basic research, arguing that taxpayers don’t need to spend billions of dollars on such pursuits. The best talent, they say, will find its way to the private sector, SpaceX-style.
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