First, there was widespread shock, followed by anxious confusion for some and astonishing credulity for others. Now, doubt prevails in how observers see the economic policy Donald Trump has been implementing. It took less than 150 days for supposedly "common sense" solutions to repair the damage caused by globalization to crash up against reality. The promises of a "chainsaw strategy" to slash public spending have turned into illusions. The establishment of a permanent power struggle with the entire world has run up against growing resistance.

Elon Musk, who had been boldly appointed to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), pitifully folded and left at the end of May. The penny-pinching savings that Musk, head of Tesla, had managed to achieve only served to sow discord within the administration. Instead of serving the nation, he used it to access citizens' private data and pushed the notion of conflicts of interest with his own companies to levels that had never been seen before in US history. Working from manipulated figures, unrealistic goals and methods that were as brutal as they were ineffective, Musk proved that a state cannot be run like a business.

The only tangible result from this episode was a cockfight between the president and the ketamine-fueled CEO, which ended up favoring the one holding the most power – in other words, Trump. Threatened with seeing his government contracts canceled with just a stroke of the presidential pen, Musk swallowed his criticisms of the budget bill pushed by the White House. After having called the bill a "disgusting abomination" and declaring that Congress was "making America bankrupt," he said he regretted some of his remarks, admitting his comments "went too far."

Pyromaniac firefighter

Yet, for once, he was right. Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" (OBBBA) dangerously defies the laws of fiscal gravity. Over the last six months, the United States budget deficit has exceeded 7% of its gross domestic product (GDP), even though the US is in a full employment situation. Rather than trying to balance the public accounts, Congress is on the verge of adopting unfunded tax cuts that will add trillions more dollars to the country's debt burden. In this, Trump, whose obsession consists of fulfilling impossible campaign promises, is playing the role of a pyromaniac firefighter. Yet the price to pay could go far beyond increasing the deficit, by threatening the stability of the international financial system.

You have 55.2% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.