Longtime Democratic strategist James Carville said in a Monday op-ed that President Trump “has broken the cardinal rule in American politics” amid economic anxiety about the president’s tariffs.
“In what will certainly be recorded as one of the most ignorant acts of political leadership in American history, the president of the United States has now willfully damaged the global economy with his tariff chaos,” Carville said in The New York Times op-ed.
“Not only was this an act of economic warfare, it has broken the cardinal rule in American politics: Never destabilize the economy. With it, the Trump administration is causing enormous damage to itself — and there can be no more distraction from this naked truth,” he added.
Markets have been unstable in the last few weeks amid Trump’s back-and-forth moves on tariffs.
Last week, he implemented a 90-day pause on “reciprocal” tariffs against multiple countries across the globe but raised tariffs against China. He then later threatened to go back on the pause if countries do not come to a deal with his administration before then.
“This is where the Democrats have an opening. In February I wrote a piece calling on my party’s leaders to play dead, allowing the Republicans to punch themselves out and crumble beneath their own weight. But many Democrats indulged Mr. Trump’s lunacy or allowed themselves to become the story over the government funding and shutdown debate, while the president continued his campaign of chaos and distraction,” Carville said in his Times column.
“Now, Democrats have an opportunity to allow the Republicans to edge closer to collapse as the party in full control of Washington — let’s please not become the story again and get in their way,” he added.
“The path to stabilizing and strengthening the country starts when Democrats can take back the economic narrative from the Republican Party and persuade the majority of Americans to close the book on the Trump chaos.”
