The Tariff Lords - Trump’s gold-framed hallucination and Europe’s naive obedience

Donald Trump has once again accomplished what no one thought possible: he has painted himself into the Olympus of the American tariff lords. Literally. In the West Wing of the White House now hangs a gold-framed painting titled "The Tariff Men." Depicted are historical figures such as Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley - and in the middle, looming heavily in oil, Donald J. Trump, who apparently sees himself as the savior of a protectionist world order.

It can hardly be interpreted otherwise: while earlier presidents used tariffs to build up a young industrial nation or to support domestic production, Trump stages himself as the rebirth of all these ghosts, none of which he could correctly cite even in a footnote of his speeches. It is the mixture of megalomania and Disneyland aesthetics that makes him so dangerous. Because unlike Clay, Lincoln, or McKinley, Trump is not a president who grappled with the challenges of how to strengthen national structures in the long term - he is a dealer who treats politics like real estate deals, with the simple logic: if I crank up the tariffs, the others must give in. The fatal thing is that Europe is doing exactly the opposite. While Trump in the painting is glorified as the icon of tariffs, European heads of government politely applaud when he dictates his conditions: 25 percent punitive tariffs on cars, 15 percent on medicines and microchips - until Europe opens its markets. And instead of finally realizing that dependence on the United States is just as dangerous as dependence on China or Russia, they hope in Brussels, Berlin, and Paris that the storm will pass if they just keep their heads down.

Imagine this: the most powerful man in the world hangs up a painting that places him on the same level with dead presidents - and Europe’s response is not outrage, not self-assertion, not an industrial policy strategy for independence, but silence and submissive bargaining. And it has long been clear: anyone who sees Trump as a partner will soon realize that he only accepts them as vassals. It is grotesque and yet extremely dangerous. Trump has not simply accepted a gift of art, he has nailed a political manifesto to the wall. "The Tariff Men" is nothing less than the visual message: America first, everyone else pays. And while he immortalizes himself in oil next to Lincoln and McKinley, Europe continues to stumble blindly into the trade trap, unable to learn the simplest lesson: emancipation means setting your own rules instead of letting them be dictated from Washington.

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