Trump wanted to punch someone so he started a trade war

With global markets shaken by President Donald Trump's surprise decision to impose strict tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, the president went into battle mode on Friday: "Trade wars are good, and easy to win," he wrote on Twitter.

But the public show of confidence belies the fact that Trump's policy maneuver, which may ultimately harm U.S. companies and American consumers, was announced without any internal review by government lawyers or his own staff, according to a review of an internal White House document.

According to two officials, Trump's decision to launch a potential trade war was born out of anger at other simmering issues and the result of a broken internal process that has failed to deliver him consensus views that represent the best advice of his team.

On Wednesday evening, the president became "unglued," in the words of one official familiar with the president's state of mind.

A trifecta of events had set him off in a way that two officials said they had not seen before: Hope Hicks' testimony to lawmakers investigating Russia's interference in the 2016 election, conduct by his embattled attorney general and the treatment of his son-in-law by his chief of staff.

Trump, the two officials said, was angry and gunning for a fight, and he chose a trade war, spurred on by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarro, the White House director for trade.

Ross had already invited steel and aluminum executives to the White House for an 11 a.m. meeting on Thursday. But Ross, according to a person with direct knowledge, hadn't told the White House who the executives were. As a result, White House officials were unable to conduct a background check on the executives to make sure they were appropriate for the president to meet with and they were not able to be cleared for entry by secret service. According to a person with direct knowledge, even White House chief of staff John Kelly was unaware of their names.

By midnight Wednesday, less than 12 hours before the executives were expected to arrive, no one on the president's team had prepared any position paper for an announcement on tariff policy, the official said. In fact, according to the official, the White House counsel's office had advised that they were as much as two weeks away from being able to complete a legal review on steel tariffs.

In response to NBC News, another White House official said that the communications team "was well-prepared to support the president's announcement" and that "many of the attendees had been in the White House before and had already been vetted for attendance at a presidential event." A different official said of the decision, "everyone in the world has known where the president's head was on this issue since the beginning of his administration."

There were no prepared, approved remarks for the president to give at the planned meeting, there was no diplomatic strategy for how to alert foreign trade partners, there was no legislative strategy in place for informing Congress and no agreed upon communications plan beyond an email cobbled together by Ross's team at the Commerce Department late Wednesday that had not been approved by the White House.

No one at the State Department, the Treasury Department or the Defense Department had been told that a new policy was about to be announced or given an opportunity to weigh in in advance.

The Thursday morning meeting did not originally appear on the president's public schedule. Shortly after it began, reporters were told that Ross had convened a "listening" session at the White House with 15 executives from the steel and aluminum industry.

Then, an hour later, in an another unexpected move, reporters were invited to the Cabinet room. Without warning, Trump announced on the spot that he was imposing new strict tariffs on imports.

By Thursday afternoon, the U.S. stock market had fallen and Trump, surrounded by his senior advisers in the Oval Office, was said to be furious.

Not since Richard Nixon started talking to the portraits on the walls of the West Wing has a president seemed so alone against the world.

One source -- who is a presidential ally -- is worried, really worried. The source says this past week is "different," that advisers are scared the President is spiraling, lashing out, just out of control. For example: Demanding to hold a public session where he made promises on trade tariffs before his staff was ready, not to mention willing. "This has real economic impact," says the source, as the Dow dropped 420 points after the President's news Thursday. "Something is very wrong."

Even by Trumpian standards, the chaos and the unraveling at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue are a stunning -- and recurring -- problem.

But there's an up-against-the-wall quality to the past couple of weeks that is striking, and the crescendo is loud, clear, unhealthy, even dangerous.
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The President is stewing, according to one source with knowledge, blaming everyone but himself for the tumult: his chief of staff Gen. John Kelly for mishandling the clearance issue, Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia investigation, Republicans for being afraid of the NRA, Democrats for obstructing everything.

So the President has gone rogue, which is not a healthy development...Multiple sources report an increasingly isolated Trump: cordoned off from old friends by Kelly, getting the cold shoulder from wife Melania (after Stormy Daniels and friends), increasing friction with his daughter and son-in-law over clearance, and home alone without longtime bodyguard/friend Keith Schiller and Hicks. His economic team is split over tariffs; his national security adviser, according to reports, will be replaced soon. No doubt the exodus will continue.

And the President -- who has bullied Jeff Sessions regularly since the summer -- is now furious that the attorney general has dared defend his department against a President who called it "disgraceful." A man who prides himself on his instinct to counterpunch finds it shocking when someone punches back. Oh the irony of Trump!

"Some of these things don't bother him like they do other people," offers another old friend, trying to explain the chaos, or at least how Donald Trump regards it.