Hi there, everyone.

Buckle up.

It's 4 o'clock in New York.

No end in sight to the largest man-made disruption to the global economy in recent human

history.

Markets today resuming their plunge, the Dow down about a thousand points to sell off

gaining steam after the White House said goods from China would be subject to a 145% tariff rate

that's higher than what Trump had said Wednesday yesterday when he said that that rate would be

125%. Essentially, markets spent yet another day trapped between

what Donald Trump says he's doing and what his administration says he means when he says what he's doing.

Branden reporting by the New York Times reveals why this keeps happening and just how isolated Donald Trump is from any semblance of a policy process in his own administration.

The New York Times reports this, quote, many of Trump's most senior advisors and officials

were unaware of this major shift in policy until the last minute because as recently as

Wednesday morning, Trump was still indicating he was sticking to his previous plan,

driving his sudden reversal, his fear that he and he alone would drive the world into an historic financial crisis.

New York Times reports this, quote,

the economic turmoil, particularly a rapid rise in government bond yields,

caused Mr. Trump to blink on Wednesday afternoon and

pause his reciprocal tariffs for most countries for the next 90 days. It left his aid

scrambling to somehow try to spin the reversal as a win. We've had more than 75 countries

contact us, and I imagine after today there will be more.

So it is just a processing problem.

...