Finley: Inside Trump’s helter-skelter mind

An acquaintance who worked in the first Trump administration offers some insight into the president’s decision-making process.

While most people start with fact-finding, analysis and negotiation before acting, Trump turns that process on its head.

He begins with the decision, and that’s when the bargaining starts.

I’ve described what Trump is doing stream-of-consciousness policymaking. A notion pops into his head and almost immediately pops out of his mouth as a finished proposal.

He can see clearly the outcome he hopes to achieve, but the process from idea to implementation can be chaotic and marked by sharp course corrections.

The former official offered his observation as a caution against getting overwrought about any edict issued by Trump until it actually goes into effect, and perhaps not even then. Changes can be sudden, and constant.

Outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said when asked about yet another twist in the tariff regime Trump is imposing on his country: “Thursday.” Trudeau’s implication was that Friday would bring yet another episode in what one of his ministers called a “psychodrama,” and of course it did.

Trump has imposed, repealed and restored tariffs on Canada and Mexico so many times it’s hard to say for certain where the levies stand.

The president’s approach to tariffs illustrates how his helter-skelter mind works. He became enamored of tariffs as a means of advancing his America First agenda and started implementing them without modeling the consequences.

His Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is following a similar story line.

Trump came into office determined to cut the size of the federal bureaucracy. He handed a chainsaw to Elon Musk and his team of young geniuses and told them to have at it.

But that’s all the instructions they had to work with. There was no game theory exercise, no deliberative process laid out for their cost-cutting and no metrics for determining what waste, fraud and abuse of tax dollars actually look like. The indiscriminate slashing has given impotent Democrats a hammer to use against the administration.

Now that the opposition has had a chance to galvanize, Trump is making Musk somewhat accountable to the cabinet secretaries and is talking about using a scalpel to make more systematic cuts.

Ukraine is another example. Trump wants peace at any cost. So, he’s created a crisis environment to leverage Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into accepting whatever deal he’s handed.

A disruptive leader isn’t necessarily a bad thing in a nation where dysfunction is so firmly entrenched.

But caution must be exercised to assure that in shaking up the system, it doesn’t collapse.

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Trump’s failure to offer a compelling reason for imposing tariffs and to articulate an end game is roiling the economy.

And it’s evidenced by not just the plunging stock market. Businesses crave certainty. They can’t change their strategies each time Trump slaps on a tariff or takes one off.

Many companies are now basing their planning on a worst-case scenario. Assuming a broad and painful tariff regime, they’re slimming down operations, cutting jobs and raising prices.

Those are the basic ingredients of a recession. If Trump’s undisciplined decision making throws the economy into a downturn, his opportunity to Make America Great Again will be short-lived.