What keeps me up at night?
“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”
— Henry Ford
I’m writing this on Saturday, April 12, 2025, pretty tired and red veiny-eyed. I was up at 4am with a full moon piercing through our window shade, as I was physically struggling with this particular instance of dishonesty regarding the tariff situation unfolding out in public right in front of us.
For full disclosure, I believe there may have been some mishandling of historical industrial and trade policy that has contributed to erosion of jobs in America. However, I also believe many understand that the Trump “Liberation Day” tariff policy was NOT demonstrating an “art of the deal.” I am disturbed by the number of leaders who are outright lying about what they know to be untrue. This is not a game.
Why was I up?
Not to pathologize again (last time was about justice sensitivity), but I think my brain might just be wired for honesty, and I can feel physically uncomfortable when others are engaging in deception. Consider this passage from NeuroLaunch.
The brain of someone with autism processes information differently, which can contribute to this increased honesty. For instance, the prefrontal cortex, responsible for executive functions such as decision-making and social behavior, may function differently in autistic individuals. This can result in a reduced tendency to engage in social manipulation or deception, leading to more straightforward and honest communication.
Personal accounts from individuals with autism often highlight their strong relationship with truth. Many describe an innate discomfort with lying or even with social niceties that they perceive as untrue. As one autistic adult shared, “I find it physically uncomfortable to say something I know isn’t true. It feels like my brain is rejecting the very idea of dishonesty.”
I understand intellectually that Trump lies and that his followers generally understand that, viewing his lies as a “feature, not a bug.”
However, this is a situation where leaders who understand what is happening are going out of their way to appease Trump. We are all witnessing this in real-time, with a rapidly evolving news cycle that impacts our daily lives (and pocketbooks!), not just some remote machinations in Washington.
Sucking
This execution of the “Liberation Day” tariff policy has been poor to say the least. Even if one believes in tariffs as a tool for policy and international trade, there was some real sucking here.
For now, we can stay away from the broader potential of lasting harm to America’s economic position in the world.
Still, there is objective reporting on the effects that the mishandling of the tariff policy have caused today:
Even in my small world as a retired guy, this uncertainty has even had a personal impact on me. I had to delay my planned Substack post from a regular Wednesday publishing schedule to Thursday because Trump implemented a “pause” in the tariffs, rendering most of the cited facts in my piece obsolete. If I can’t even properly plan out a blog, how can a CEO plan out an international business?
Even this morning, I had a text thread with friends about buying new iPhones during the pause after Apple announced an airlift of 1.5 million phones from India to avoid tariffs. That said, the text thread quickly ended with the White House announcement in real-time of an exemption of mobile phones and laptops from tariffs. Again, if just buying an iPhone requires staying up-to-the-minute on the news, how is a business supposed to make a real investment, like commencing a capital project?
This is real. This isn’t a Democrat or Republican issue. I think we can all safely agree that there was some sucking here in the back-and-forth.
Praise for sucking?
After the announcement of the pause, this video of Trump’s cabinet praising him unconditionally on the handling of the tariff situation left me speechless. The headline of the news coverage was “Trump called a cabinet meeting after walking back his tariff plans. It might as well have been held in Moscow.”
In the social media realm, David Sacks, Trump’s AI and crypto czar wrote a curious tweet on X indicating that “Trump was right about everything.”
The post by billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman praising Trump for “The Art of the Deal” got 85K likes! I get that Ackman deserves some “credit” for proposing the 90-day pause on X, but there was some excessive and over-the-top kissing up here.
Even though the relief was likely genuine that the egregious tariff schedule announced on “Liberation Day” got paused, I don’t think the events demonstrated any “right about everything” or any “Art of the Deal.” There is NO deal, and we’ve exposed an even more dangerous situation with China right now.
China is holding about 2.6% of US debt. Last week, there was a sell-off in US Treasury Bonds during overnight markets, driving bond prices down and interest rates up. Analysts fear that China may have played a role here. China is demonstrating that it can play a role in destabilizing our economy far beyond tariffs if we threaten them.
I think we have to admit that we may have sucked it on this one, and the rest of the world sees it, too.
Microsoft as an example of sucking and winning
All hope isn’t lost. I think a recent article about Microsoft illustrated the point of being OK to suck at things.
“You would rather win the new than protect the past.”
— Satya Nadella, as Microsoft turned 50 years old
Microsoft has a $3 trillion valuation by sucking at a bunch of stuff they did in the past, but admitting to it! Let’s face it. They sucked in the user interface design of Windows 8. They sucked in keeping Internet Explorer relevant. They sucked in the rollout of Windows Phone.
So how does Microsoft succeed? Since Satya Nadella took over, the company has admitted failures, and embraced a more open device ecosystem for its cloud services and productivity suites. Desktop operating systems are now less than 10 percent of revenue, reducing their reliance on the parts of their offering that suck.
Microsoft is still not #1 in cloud services (Amazon Web Services has this honor), and its Teams software is generally considered “behind” Zoom for conferencing and Slack for messaging. However, Microsoft has rightfully earned its place as a business partner to the marketplace around the world by offering enough good stuff and not trying to overly push the stuff that isn’t good. They partner with others in trying to deliver the best overall ecosystem. They are being generally honest about their role, and that has value!
Honesty is the Best Policy
The US used to be pretty honest about offering some good stuff (treaties, defense, and foreign aid in the form of medicine and food). The US had a stable system, with checks and balances across three branches of government and a general respect for rule of law. The US certainly wasn’t the best at everything, but there was enough good stuff where the rest of the world used the US Dollar as a reserve currency, and the US enjoyed a lot of foreign investment and low cost of debt. In its first 80 days, I agree with many of the reports that the Trump administration has done a lot to erode those values.
In this case of tariff policy, we sucked it. I think we have an opportunity as citizens to show the world that we are not asleep here and that we can help hold our government accountable. I believe we should stop accepting congresspeople going along with lies.
I’d like to point out some quotes from this article about congressional “kissing up” to Trump regarding the tariff situation so far.
House speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. - “Behold the ‘Art of the Deal’.”
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La. “I think it’s a win for America, and I think you have to conclude it’s a win for him.”
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, “It proves that Trump’s a good deal maker.”
While Trump can appoint his own cabinet to appear on video in a staged meeting, these quotes are coming from members of the US Congress elected by ordinary citizens! I get that Elon Musk is threatening to fund the opposition of any congresspeople who oppose Trump. Despite the falling approval ratings for Elon Musk, his money is still good with the GOP.
We should be demanding more from our legislators. Call them. And focus on fixing the system. Again, I do not view this as a Democrat versus Republican issue, and I have many friends and colleagues across the political spectrum. I just think the only way we all get better is to admit our failures and work together to improve, this time more intelligently.
Do you have any thoughts to add here?
Note: I think I am going to reduce the frequency of posting for a time while I refocus my energy. I started this Substack to journal my own feelings through my retirement journey, as well as to address discussion topics brought up by friends. (There’s still a backlog of these topics I haven’t gotten to yet!)
I’ve been compelled as of late to write about more political topics to share thoughts. These current events are having a direct impact on our financial outlook, our kids’ careers, and our own personal journeys. There’s been a lot to process. I’m debating on whether such frequent communication is the correct way to do this, or if I should be taking the time to better formulate thoughts like this before putting them out on the Internet given the potential controversy.
Of course, I’ll keep covering more general retirement topics, but these current events are currently dominating my thoughts at the moment. Feel free to DM me or call if you have thoughts on that!
Also, as of today, I still only have 13 survey responses from the survey I launched back in February. I am still interested in feedback if you have some time to contribute! Thank you!
OMG, I started thinking I would have to stop reading your substack. This led to my doing some reflection to understand this feeling. I was disturbed as you raised the same thoughts that I was having. While I am believing more and more that ignorance is bliss, I cannot let myself be ignorant, but I do find myself skimming the news rather than doing deep reads as I did in the past. It is too jarring to me to read the active lying.
One can either be a truth teller, or a liar, it is binary (and maybe part of this thought is my being on the spectrum). I raised my children where the punishment for lying was always more severe than whatever they lied about. People used to believe that facts are facts. Whether one believes in gravity or not, one will fall. However, as we learned after inauguration day 2017, liars believe that there can be "alternative facts."
I came around to understanding that I will continue to read your substack posts. I will take comfort knowing that someone has similar thoughts and reactions as I do.