25.4.2025

Today, this isn't about his ego, his constant lies, his hatred, his lack of morals, his criminality and lawlessness, his current coup d'état from above, or his path to fascism. This is about his striking incompetence, or in other words, his shockingly low level of education. Current developments in the United States dramatically demonstrate the importance and relevance of education. The term "education" is not uniformly defined and has been interpreted differently in various theories. Education is knowledge, but also personal development, reflection, maturity, worldview, foresight, etc.

Education is knowledge

Education can be gained by looking at history books. At the end of February, the US President unleashed a global trade war with his punitive tariffs. This isn't the first. The massive introduction of import tariffs has shown the same pattern in every case: They trigger retaliatory tariffs, rising inflation, resulting in a recession, and ultimately, all participants lose. The hope of strengthening one's own economy is reliably deceptive every time.

It's also a basic economic arithmetic that tariffs don't lead to booming government revenues, but rather to rising prices, falling demand, and declining economic activity. All leading economists predicted the negative consequences of punitive tariffs after their threat. The knowledge is there, but it hasn't reached the President.

Education is insight

"Education does not come from reading, but from thinking about what one has read." (Carl Andreas Hilty). Education means reflection and questioning topics, opinions, information, but also one's own personality – this is called self-criticism. The US President considers himself the world's greatest negotiator and wanted to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours. To achieve this goal, he gave in in advance to the Russian President's maximum demands – over the heads of the stricken Ukraine. The quick ceasefire nevertheless remained an illusion.

The American President failed to recognize that the KGB-experienced Russian is far superior to him in terms of negotiating skills, propaganda, and patience, that he holds an even stronger position due to the time pressure in Washington and the situation on the front lines, and that, lacking his own interest in a ceasefire after agreeing to the original demands, he naturally makes further demands. Putin has been leading Trump around by the nose for weeks. The latter begins to see this, but does not translate it into insight, but rather into anger, which he unleashes not on the strong, but in a poor manner on the weak, Ukraine and its president.

Education is foresight

Politics and economics operate within complex interrelationships and dependencies. Foresight means anticipating the effects that turning one screw will have elsewhere in the larger context. It was actually no surprise that the stock markets collapsed after the tariff announcements in anticipation of the likely recession or even stagflation.

The even greater danger, however, lies in the fact that the US, while the world's strongest economy, simultaneously has a gigantic national deficit with immense debts of USD 37 trillion, for example, owed to China (almost USD 800 billion) and Japan (almost USD 1.3 trillion), which thus gives them enormous leverage against Trump. Parallel to the stock market crash, yields have skyrocketed as a result of sales of US government bonds. This means rising interest rates, which will further drive up debt service on the upcoming refinancing of approximately USD 7 trillion this year.

Trump didn't anticipate this and only backpedaled after the disruption, which further increased the chaos in the markets.

The reactions of America's old allies to Trump's hatred and erratic actions, as well as the disruption in the capital markets, also clearly demonstrate the dwindling trust in the reliability of the United States. However, trust is the basis of contracts and economic cooperation, the prerequisite for investment and also for obtaining loans. At the same time, trust is quickly destroyed but only very slowly rebuilt. Chaotic back and forth is helpful for testing boundaries and, if necessary, respecting them again. The resulting loss of trust, however, represents serious long-term damage.

Who will win?

Trump has been relatively successful so far in undermining democracy, as the courts can barely keep up and are ignored by him, because the Democrats have still not managed to form an effective opposition, and because popular protests, while growing louder, still have room to grow in numbers.

However, the economic damage resulting from his incompetence is becoming increasingly clear and will eventually be reflected in voters' wallets. And wallets have traditionally galvanized American voters into action. Furthermore, the most effective opposition at the moment is the capital markets, which even Trump cannot ignore.

Perhaps his hatred, his ruthlessness, and his unscrupulousness will help him towards achieving his goals. At the same time his low level of education might also be the decisive obstacle on the way.

Education is important.