[fn Square] Doing Our Best in the Age of Trump’s Tweets

There is a joke that goes, "Do your best, then wait for Trump’s tweet." It has become a meme meaning that after you have done everything you can, you still have to wait and see what President Donald Trump posts on social media. As many will guess, it is a play on a traditional saying that means "do all that is humanly possible and leave the rest to fate." Strictly speaking, the wordplay is not grammatically perfect, but that hardly matters. The phrase first appeared in 2019, during Trump’s first term, when the Trade Negotiations Office at the Ministry of Industry was in talks with the United States over auto tariffs. Behind the joke lay a real fear: even after Korea had done its utmost to secure a delay in Washington’s tariff decision, Trump could still suddenly change course at the last minute.
Six or seven years on, Donald Trump is repeating the same patterns. On the 27th of last month, Korea time, the Korean government and officialdom were thrown into turmoil. Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social, claiming that "the Korean legislature is not honoring its agreement with the United States" and warning that he would raise "all reciprocal tariffs on automobiles, lumber, pharmaceuticals, and all other goods from 15% to 25%." The next day, he told reporters that he would "try to work out a solution with Korea," striking a more conciliatory tone. But it is far too soon to say the tangled knot has been undone. No one knows when he might suddenly blurt out something completely different.
Trump is often likened to a rugby ball: no one can predict which way he will bounce. There is no shortage of examples to prove the point. Recently, he linked the Greenland dispute to trade and brandished a threat to impose tariffs of 10–25% on eight European countries, including Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, only to withdraw the plan just four days later. He has also launched fierce verbal attacks on Canada, which is deepening trade ties with China, saying he could slap 100% tariffs on Canadian goods, yet he has not actually carried this out. And when India, which had been locked in a tariff standoff with the United States, announced it would stop buying Russian crude oil, Trump suddenly played the generous partner and cut tariffs from 25% to 18%.
Trump prefers to use social media when he wants to communicate his intentions, and there is a calculated strategy behind this. Gerald Seib, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), argues that Trump’s love of social media serves three purposes. First, he uses it as a way to test the waters before entering negotiations. Second, by mentioning a particular issue, he tries to seize the initiative and set the agenda. Third, he uses social media to divert attention away from issues that are unfavorable to him. Many people grumble that "his erratic tweets are ruining the world," but the chances that Trump will give up his reckless use of social media are effectively zero.
Trump’s niece, clinical psychologist Mary Trump, published a psychological profile of him in 2020 under the title Too Much and Never Enough. In it, she describes him as a "selfish monster who should never have become president" and highlights "cruelty" as one of the key concepts for understanding him. In her view, Trump is not merely aggressive or cold. Rather, he is someone who uses cruelty strategically to control and subjugate others, and to maximize his own power and gratification. Seen in that light, his tariff threats are an expression of a psychological mechanism aimed at rattling counterparties and gaining the upper hand in negotiations. The economic costs and the damage to international trust that arise in the process do not even register for him.
At the end of last year, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles said in an interview with the U.S. magazine Vanity Fair, "Trump has the personality of an alcoholic," adding, "He acts as if there is nothing he cannot do." She went on, "Before we announced the reciprocal tariffs, there was enormous disagreement over whether it was actually good policy. Vice President James David Vance and I even tried to slow things down." If even Wiles—often described as Trump’s right-hand woman and dubbed the "cold-blooded Ice Baby"—speaks this way, it gives a sense of just how far Trump’s obstinacy goes. The authors of another book, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, go so far as to label him a narcissist, a villain, a madman, and a sociopath.
In the end, what we can do is to "do all that is humanly possible"—to exhaust every effort within our control. Only then will some room open up for those of us who must deal with this "too much and never enough" villain. It leaves a bitter taste, but there is no way around it. The realistic goal is to steer this crisis to a close without seeing the 25% tariffs reimposed. To shield companies from harm, there can be no divide between ruling and opposition parties. Everything must be debated and coordinated from the standpoint of the national interest. Because Donald Trump is trying to play Sheriff with tariffs, many others are paying the price.
jsm64@fnnews.com Jung Soon-min Reporter