Roadmap to Ruin: How Trump’s Policies Risk Long-Term Economic Collapse

I’m not an economist. I’m a lawyer who studied history, philosophy, and a lot of economic history along the way. And here’s the straight truth: the policies Trump is rolling out aren’t just bad—they’re catastrophic. If you know anything about how economies work (and how they’ve failed in the past), you can see the writing on the wall.

Mass deportations, tariffs, and erratic trade policies will not “Make America Great Again.” They’re going to rip out the foundations of the economy, leave industries bleeding, and isolate the U.S. on the world stage. Sure, it’ll look good for a minute—maybe even a year or two. But underneath, it’s a roadmap to ruin.

Step One: The Illusion of Growth

Let’s start with a basic economic principle that Trump and his advisors clearly don’t understand: the broken window fallacy. Here’s the idea. If a shopkeeper’s window gets smashed, paying someone to fix it creates activity—it puts money in the glazier’s pocket. But that’s not growth. The shopkeeper could’ve used that money to buy something new, something productive, instead of just fixing what was broken.

Now scale that up. Deporting millions of workers? Smashing the window. Tariffs on imports? Smashing the window. Picking trade fights with allies? Smashing the window. Yes, it’ll create some activity but don’t count on factories reopening. A few jobs might pop up as companies scramble to deal with increasing costs and shortages. None of this is productive. It’s just shifting resources to fix what Trump has broken.

Step Two: Destroying Latent Value

What’s being destroyed here isn’t just tangible—it’s the latent value in systems that take generations to build. This is the stuff you don’t see on balance sheets but underpins everything:

• Deportations: Millions of workers gone. Industries like agriculture, construction, and hospitality will collapse. These workers aren’t just numbers—they’re the backbone of entire supply chains and the institutional knowledge of many companies. You can’t replace them overnight, and when businesses go under, they’re gone for good.
• Tariffs and Trade Wars: America doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The world doesn’t need to trade with them—they have other options. Once you burn those bridges, rebuilding them takes years, if not decades. In the meantime, the rest of the world moves on, and America gets left behind.
• Education Cuts: Gutting funding for education is like draining the oil from the engine. You quickly learn that you’re not going anywhere. Without investment in human capital—teachers, students, training—your economy doesn’t innovate. It falls behind.

This isn’t just reckless—it’s suicidal. America’s economy has been built on trust, relationships, and competition. Destroy those, and you’re left with a hollow shell. Lose your institutional knowledge and the road back to prosperity is long and painful.

Step Three: The Mirage of Success

For a little while, this might look like it’s working. Tariffs may make a handful of domestic industries look good. The economy might appear to grow a bit. There will be frantic spending by new government officials in some areas and by companies in a panic to find a path to survive.

But it’s a mirage. Here’s what’s really happening:

1. Higher Prices: Tariffs drive up costs for consumers. That “Made in America” sticker comes with a hefty price tag.
2. Labor Shortages: Without immigrant workers, productivity tanks. You can’t just swap in untrained workers and expect the same output. Aside from the fact there is low unemployment to start with and many Americans refuse jobs that require hard work.
3. Lost Trust: Global trade depends on reliability. When America acts like an unpredictable partner, businesses and governments look elsewhere.

What’s worse? While the U.S. is stuck in this illusion, the rest of the world is moving forward. Countries like China and India are building alliances, cutting deals, and investing in the future. Meanwhile, America is stuck in the past, trying to relive some nostalgic fantasy of economic dominance.

Step Four: The Wall

Every bad plan eventually hits a wall, and this one will be no different. Here’s how it ends:

• Stagnation: Rising costs and shrinking markets choke growth.
• Retaliation: Other countries fight back. Tariffs escalate, trade collapses, and American exporters are shut out of global markets.
• Collapse: The economy can only run on smoke and mirrors for so long. Eventually, the cracks become craters, and the whole thing falls apart.

We’ve seen this before. Smoot-Hawley in the 1930s turned a bad recession into the Great Depression. Venezuela’s isolationist policies destroyed its economy. The blueprint for failure is well-documented, and Trump is following it to the letter.

What Saddens Me Most

Here’s the part that really gets me: this didn’t have to happen. We’ve been here before. After World War II, economists showed us how to rebuild economies: trust, competition, innovation. They knew that prosperity isn’t built on isolation or destruction—it’s built on openness and progress.

But it’s clear now that we forgot. As a society, we failed to pass on this knowledge. We’ve let ideology replace expertise and spectacle replace substance. And now, we’re all going to pay the price.

A Brand New Roadmap to Ruin

This isn’t a roadmap to growth—it’s a roadmap to ruin. The short-term gains are an illusion, and the long-term damage will be catastrophic. The U.S. is burning trust, destroying industries, and isolating themselves from the world. When the reckoning comes, it will be brutal. And the saddest part is, we could’ve seen it coming.

History handed us the answers, but the U.S. chose to ignore them. Now, we’re all speeding toward the wall with a clown at the wheel.

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