Straight into mid-Feb, I was seeing journalists at The Economist and Financial Times repeating the "Take Trump seriously but not literally" mantra, insisting he wasn't about to start a trade war.

Business conservatives were fully bought in on Trump just saying this to fleece the rubes. They assumed he'd be surrounded by the same old Wall Street Republicans that had been running the party since the McKinley Administration.

But if you've ever actually picked up a copy of The Network State or read a few chapters from Thiel's Zero to One, you'd understand this isn't Dick Cheney's administration. These people really do believe a highly segregated and heavily policed series of balkinized libertarian enclaves is the future of the country. Trump is executing a plan that's so far outside the neoliberal economics we've been growing up under that guys like Cornell couldn't see it coming.

I was going to say this. Especially since they just gutted the government agencies that would look into it.

Probably, but the big box retailers have an amazing fall guy for higher prices.