Trump, Tariffs, and the Cost of Not Listening

Does Trump Listen?

Does U.S. President Donald Trump listen? That depends on what you mean by listen. He hears what people say, though his attention span reportedly is short. But does he listen in the sense that he becomes convinced of what someone says and acts accordingly? He does if it agrees with his thinking, so they say. But that is pretty normal. Yet, does Trump ever get convinced when someone disagrees with him? Not very often.

Trump’s Tariffs Make Wall Street Scream

Wall Street is screaming disagreement with President Donald Trump right now about his exceedingly repressive tariffs he has imposed on all nations. Yet Trump, who has always paid so much attention to the stock market, is not listening. CEOs of big corporations who supported Trump this time around for president did not think his predicted tariffs would be this excessive. They are claiming it will throw the U.S., if not the entire world, into recession.

During Crisis, Nero Fiddled and Trump Golfed

Yet Trump did like Roman Emperor Nero, fiddling while Rome burned, by announcing his tariffs last Wednesday and that weekend golfing in Miami with the big shot pro golfers at the Trump-owned Doral Resort Hotel. It’s like this man is deaf in one ear and can’t hear out of the other ear!

Bob Woodward and Michael Wolf probably understand Donald Trump better than any other journalists in Washington, D. C. Since Trump first ran for president, in 2015, each of Woodward and Wolff have now written four books about Trump, and they are devastating exposes of the man. Wolff’s most recent treatment was released in late February this year entitled All or Nothing: How Donald Trump Recaptured America, published by The Bridge Street Press.

Wolff claims in All or Nothing that when Trump won his presidency, then got impeached twice in the House, then charged with rape by a New York court, then became a felon with 34 counts against him, then lost reelection for the presidency, and then ran for the presidency again in 2024, “His proposition was always, ‘I’ll go to jail or to the White House.'” Wolff’s later adds in the book, “That’s the poetry of Donald Trump: everything he does contains the seeds of absolute catastrophe or total inexplicable success.” That’s what Wolff means by the title of his book—All or Nothing.

“Trump’s Obsessed with Lawyers”

Trump has always threatened people, especially with lawsuits. I tell about it in my book, Bible Predicts Trump Fall, how lawyer Roy Cohn became his mentor, telling him to sue all the time. Sue everybody, including the federal government, which Trump did as a New York real estate mogul.

Wolff further says in his book, “Trump’s obsessed with lawyers.” It’s a major theme in the book.

Wolff says of now President Donald Trump and his political aides regarding the first weeks of his presidency, which have been full of so much change resulting in chaos, “These people are utter incompetents. … They have no idea what they are doing. That has always been the case around Donald Trump. Why should you be intimidated by these people? And yet it’s not only law companies, it’s universities, it’s the entire tech industry: capitulation.” Yeah, but more than that—it’s the Republican Party that is afraid of Trump. He’s made it into the Trump Party.

Wolff alleges in a Telegraph article published on April 5th that Donald Trump has a “profound inability to listen. … When people try to force information on him, he really reacts, physically.”

Wolff Says Trump “Is a Crazy Person”

Wolff doesn’t let up on this man. He further contends, “Trump is not like you or me or anyone else we know. He is a crazy person. You can’t predict what a crazy man will do, and that’s frightening. All bets are off.”

Trump being frightening reminds me of how he sometimes says something one day, and most people who heard it thought he meant what he said, yet the next day he claims he was only joking. That’s like a biblical proverb that says, “Like a maniac who shoots deadly firebrands and arrows, so is one who deceives a neighbor and says, ‘I am only joking!'” (Proverbs 16.18-19 NRSV).

I wrote my book about Trump because there is so much wisdom literature in the Bible that strongly opposes people like him, and I applied some of to Trump in the book. For instance, the Bible’s proverbs further state, “Fools think their own way is right, but the wise listen to advice” (Proverbs 12.15). We also read, “in abundance of counselors there is victory” (Proverbs 24.6). Finally, “There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way to death” (Proverbs 14.12; cf. 16.25).