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Moving forward, Trump can boost or depress the price of virtually any stock through the creation or elimination of tariffs. On Tuesday, Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG), best known as the parent company of the social media platform Truth Social, announced it was launching a series of actively managed investment accounts. TMTG is marketing these "Truth Social-branded Separately Managed Accounts" as a way to invest in companies that benefit from Trump's political agenda. Trump remains the majority shareholder of TMTG.

In the April 15 press release, TMTG said the new investment accounts would "offer investors access to curated, thematic investment strategies rooted in American values and priorities." Among the themes are "Made in America," which presumably would focus on companies that would benefit from tariffs on competitors who make goods abroad and import them to the United States.

To bring the different strands of the argument together, Trump’s strategy has been much less effective than it might have been. Trump has shown he is unwilling to stick by deals. Law firms that have submitted find that they are on the hook for far more than they bargained for. Columbia University, after making humiliating and profound concessions, finds that it is expected to make far greater ones, with no guarantee that even these will satisfy the Trump administration’s demands

As a whole body of research on “tying the king’s hands” argues, independent actors will prefer to flee monarchs who refuse to be bound rather than to cooperate with them, because they know that such monarchs can’t be trusted. Any deal that they make can later be un-made, and probably will be, if unmaking it is to the king’s advantage. The best option may be not to submit, especially if you believe that others are similarly unwilling to comply. This may, in effect, turn what was a prisoner’s dilemma (in which everyone’s best strategy is to defect) back into a nearly pure coordination game again, allowing easier collective resistance.

Or, it may not. If people don’t have reason to believe that others will stand up, then they still are unlikely to stand up themselves.

We want to sit down at the bargaining table and renegotiate the USMCA trade deal today. A new trade deal for North America should have a manufacturing minimum wage. A new trade deal for North America should make it so if you want to sell product in a country, you have to make a product in that country. That would be good for Canada, for the United States, and for Mexico.

A new trade deal should fix the race to the bottom in the supply chain also — we don’t want our independent parts suppliers members, who are just as essential to this industry, to be left behind. We need enforcement mechanisms to make sure that trade is tied to how these companies treat their workers, and we need a trade agreement that guarantees that labor rights are protected in Canada, the US, and Mexico.