A and B, not A or B
By 
It’s a common claim that Trump’s tariffs are nothing more than a not very elaborate shakedown racket. Certainly the exemptions announced yesterday for the benefit of the owners and management of the Apple Corporation fit that model to a t. (Or is it a tee? What does that mean anyway?).
But Trump has been talking about the magical power of tariffs since the 1980s, that is, long before he could have anticipated what a great opportunity they would be for him personally to enrich himself via open corruption. Speaking of which, this comment from CrunchyFrog is on point:
In addition to the fact that Trump paid no price for 1/6, it’s worth noting that there weren’t even investigations into his openly taking bribes in his first term. Today the press acts ho-hum-dog-bites-man to Trump openly telling people he’s getting millions in cash bribes and manipulating the stock market.
Amazing how fast the US has adapted to replacing a President with an openly corrupt dictator and pretending this is how it’s always been.
We’ll have to tell the kids that it wasn’t always like this. That actually, once, only a bit more than 50 years ago, a Vice President had to resign due to bribery and was indicted and convicted like an ordinary criminal.
It’s quite true that Spiro Agnew’s corruption was nowhere close to as extreme or open as Donald Trump’s, yet that he had to resign once it was exposed wasn’t controversial, even in the midst of the (unrelated) Watergate scandal. I know this phrase is always understood sarcastically, but in this particular regard it really was a simpler, more innocent time. If you look back at the 1950s and 1960s, it’s striking how many national political scandals turn on somebody getting comped a few hundred dollars of landscaping equipment, and things of that sort.
Back to the main point: I believe that the tendency to treat Trump’s astoundingly open corruption as the “real” explanation for something like the tariffs is a kind of defense mechanism, erected against the realization that Trump loves tariffs not just because they are conduits for mob-style shakedowns, but because he really is stupid enough to think that running a trade deficit with another country means America is “losing” to that country, and that the loss is a consequence of “unfair” trade practices (like imposing tariffs), because America can’t lose any fair competitions by definition, just like Donald J. Trump can’t, also by definition.
The stupidity also helps enable the corruption, because a profoundly stupid person like Trump finds it completely unsurprising and non-problematic that his ridiculous and irrational beliefs about tariffs should dovetail so conveniently with a self-dealing extortion scheme, i.e., what’s good for America is also what’s good for Donald Trump’s personal finances.
Nobody wants to believe that the most powerful politician in the country could be that utterly clueless and confused. But he is.
When it comes to Trump, corrupt or stupid is a radically false dichotomy. This is true for many of his minions and most fanatic supporters as well. But it is always 100% true about Trump himself.