This will determine if we get a 'Trump recession or a depression': Financial Times writer

Financial Times columnist Edward Luce on Tuesday ridiculed President Donald Trump's billionaire backers who have expressed bewilderment at his decision to launch trade wars against nearly every nation on Earth.

Pointing to comments from Trump-backing hedge-fund billionaire Bill Ackman that expressed dismay at Trump's trade strategy, Luce found himself at a loss to explain why so many supposedly intelligent people still believe that there is a grand plan at play when the reality is that the president is simply erratic and vindictive.

"The mystery is why so many — from Ackman’s fellow billionaires to Florida-based Venezuelans — have bent over backwards to miss who Trump is," he wrote. "A trillion comments have been wasted accusing the wrong people of Trump derangement syndrome. The real TDS afflicts those who keep seeing a rational actor, or an economic chess game, where none exists."

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Luce believes that Trump's lack of strategy will become clearer in the coming days as the realities of his trade wars start to hit the real economy.

Luce also thinks that things could get particularly dicey if Trump's behavior starts cratering the global appetite for investing in United States Treasury bonds, which have long been a safe harbor for investors during times of economic turbulence.

"The idea that Trump’s impact will be limited to the goods-traded economy is also wishful thinking," he explained. "Foreigners own a critical share of US Treasury debt. Continued high demand for an asset in whose issuer the world is losing trust is the difference between a Trump recession and a Trump depression."

All of this lead Luce to conclude that "Trump’s sane-washers have forfeited their credibility" given that "there is no school of foreign policy realism, or trade mercantilism, that could explain Trump’s actions."