Amid fears of a Great Depression triggered by Donald Trump's punishing tariffs, an American investment specialist has written an open letter to the US President calling out his policies as a scattershot retaliation dressed up as reform. Shay Boloor, who also hosts a social media platform for traders and investors, said he was up for a "smarter America-first policy," but that's not what Trump is working towards.
"What you’ve rolled out isn’t detox -- it’s whiplash," he wrote on X in a post that has received more than 1.6 million views. "This isn’t strategic decoupling. It’s scattershot retaliation dressed up as reform. There’s no roadmap. No operational playbook. No clear articulation of where this ends or what the metrics of success even are. It’s not an attempt to responsibly unwind America’s role as the global shock absorber -- it’s a brute-force attempt to disorder the existing system with no viable alternative in place."
Boloor also told the US President that contrary to what he believed, what he created with his policies isn't deindustrialisation, it's an "intentional sabotage of capital planning". He further pointed out that no businesses would be interested in building factories in the US four-year political horizon risk, a floating tariff regime, and no labour certainty. "No investor is going to fund expansion in a market where the basic cost of imports can change weekly based on what country has a current account surplus that week. The system you’ve launched isn’t designed for certainty. It’s designed for control," he said.
The specialist also highlighted that with his decisions, Trump did not just start a trade war with China but alienated allies and punished countries for their poverty.
"Israel gets slapped with 17 percent tariffs while dismantling their own to support American imports," Boloor said. "Vietnam gets hit with 46 percent because it’s become too productive. Lesotho, one of the poorest countries on Earth, faces a 50 percent tariff because it doesn’t buy enough U.S. goods -- as if that were a sign of unfairness rather than poverty. It’s incoherent. It’s cruel. And it undermines any claim to moral high ground."
Several social media users agreed with Boloor's perspective.
"This was your most insightful and spot on outlook regarding the magnificent blunder this regime is making. Very well articulated especially the part concerning reallocation of capital and the level of uncertainty impacting any expansion or business planning ability," user @TheJudge85 commented.
Another X user Gaurav Nanda (@gauravnanda_) said, "This is going to destroy small business fast. Small businesses don't have the deep pockets to continue to play games. We don't have months to try this out."
Meanwhile, Asian stock markets collapsed on Monday as China retaliated against Trump's punishing tariffs with its own hefty tariffs, ramping up a trade war many fear could spark a recession even as countries seek to compromise with the defiant president.
Black Monday arrived as the American President defended his tariffs, saying a lot of countries are 'dying to make a deal' and any adjustment in the stock market would be temporary.
Hopes that Trump would rethink his policy in light of the turmoil were dashed Sunday when he said he would not make a deal with other countries unless trade deficits were solved. He denied that he was intentionally engineering a selloff and insisted he could not foresee market reactions.
"Sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something," he said of the disruption that has wiped trillions of dollars off company valuations.
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