Any remaining thoughts that President Donald Trump has been playing three-dimensional chess while everyone else around him is engaged in less sophisticated pursuits should perish with his sudden abandonment of tariff threats against Mexico. The only thing Trump got from this stunt was yet another round of abundant attention as everyone tried to decipher the riddle of "what is this unusual and loopy man up to this time because he's breaking the norms of generally accepted presidential behavior?" For Trump personally, the opportunity to generate and then bask in that kind of media buzz is, of course, far from nothing. Self-aggrandizement and self-preservation have motivated almost all of his thinking for decades, first as an unknown outer-borough tyro, then as a closely watched developer and carnival barker, finally during his years as TV celebrity and now president. Trump certainly grabbed the spotlight. After all, by unexpectedly threatening, via Twitter, to impose onerous tariffs on Mexico if it failed to help solve the immigration and humanitarian crisis spilling over from Central America and into the U.S., Trump set the global business and political communities on edge. Read the whole thing. China and Russia Want to Control the 'World Island' – James Stavridis Trump's Awful Comments Need a Real Response – Jonathan Bernstein Is Bernie Sanders Finished? – Jonathan Bernstein Hong Kong's Moment of Reckoning – Ben Bland Prepare for Another Summer of Overtourism – Leonid Bershidsky Iran Has Little to Gain From Oman Tanker Attacks – Julian Lee What the Market Rebound Really Means – Mohamed A. El-Erian Democrats Are Blowing Their Chance to Investigate Trump – Jonathan Bernstein China's Likely to Lose a Tech Cold War – Michael Schuman Saturday New Music Here are seven new albums you can stream right now, including from Bruce Springsteen and Madonna. This is the Weekend Edition of Bloomberg Opinion Today, a roundup of the 10 most popular stories Bloomberg Opinion published this week, based on web readership, with some other stuff thrown in. |
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