The Life in My Years

On Sunday April 6th, billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman turned to X (Twitter) and sounded the alarm after Trump’s so-called “liberation day” liberated Wall Street of $5 trillion dollars (and me of $20,000 dollars). Ackman wrote in part,
“ … by placing massive and disproportionate tariffs on our friends and our enemies alike and thereby launching a global economic war against the whole world at once, we are in the process of destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner, as a place to do business, and as a market to invest capital.
If … on April 9th we launch economic nuclear war on every country in the world, business investment will grind to a halt, consumers will close their wallets and pocket books, and we will severely damage our reputation with the rest of the world that will take years and potentially decades to rehabilitate.
What CEO and what board of directors will be comfortable making large,
long-term, economic commitments in our country in the middle of an economic nuclear war?
I don’t know of one who will do so.
When markets crash, new investment stops, consumers stop spending money, and businesses have no choice but to curtail investment and fire workers.”

Two days later, on April 8th, the day before economic Armageddon, I bought two pairs of Brooks running shoes at the usual $139 dollars before the price would skyrocket to – who knows. Not knowing if tariffs would adversely affect airline fares and hotel accommodations, I also made reservations for a ten day stay in New York City in May.

I wasn’t the only one making preemptive purchases. In January there was a surge in imports and in the days leading to ‘liberation day,’ there was a spike in purchases of everything from clothing to small and large appliances to electronics and gadgets to imported food products. Provisioning in anticipation of the cataclysm.

To travel or not to travel has been the ongoing discussion between my wife and I ever since Trump began antagonizing the world, scrambling the global economy, and leaning Putinesque when it comes to basic rights. Foreign lands were removed from our travel map early on, not so much because we were afraid of the reaction we would receive as Americans but because I would be worried about being hassled by customs when trying to reenter. We’re both law abiding citizens but every day basic rights and the law seem to become more blurry. Better to remain inside the borders until/unless it becomes prudent to cross the border for good. 

In the end, knowing that our window for traveling is beginning to close, we decided to go. Our future, everyone’s future, has become uncertain. That said, Cora and I consider ourselves lucky. We’re far less vulnerable than so many in this country, who are facing growing uncertainty; deportation, imprisonment, prosecution, loss of income, loss of healthcare, food insecurity, loss of shelter and loss of any number of support systems. Every day we feel anxiety, but we don’t wake up to the nagging gut wrenching fear that others face every minute of every day. This is life in Trump’s America. And so we take one more trip, not knowing when we’ll feel comfortable traveling; or if we’ll be able to travel.

I wonder about the people who have a 401K and don’t bother to look at it and just assume it’s taking care of itself and only take a peek at it every few months. I know some people who are simply too afraid to look. They’re in for a surprise.

I wonder about the emergency meetings being held in corporate boardrooms to try to strategize what they’re going to do in an economy that’s being held hostage by the capricious whims of a combative president who operates out of impulse. And then there are the small businesses and start-ups that have a slimmer margin of safety than large corporations.