One year ago, President Trump declared “Liberation Day” initiating major protectionist trade policy through executive order. The policy imposed broad country-by-country tariffs, raising the taxes paid by U.S. wholesalers and importers with the aim of increasing U.S. manufacturing, reducing the trade deficit, and protecting American jobs. The Supreme Court has since ruled those tariffs unconstitutional, and their impact on jobs and expanding the U.S. manufacturing base is a story too new to accurately be told, but the playbook remains.

Trump’s Liberation Day strategy has been repeated in debates over DOGE, federal budgeting, Greenland, Venezuela, voting rights, and now Iran. First, the President sets a deadline enforced by threats of massive executive authority to impose his will, followed by a willingness to shift the deadline or even the goal, and if necessary, let the talks collapse completely. It is reliant on the other side believing you are willing to follow-through on the threat. The ends justifying the means style of President Trump is a new normal, best expressed in his f-bomb laced Easter Truth Social post.