“… When Trump at last announced the tariffs—levied on friends and enemies—many of them saw the move less in economic terms than as a moment of redemption: The country had gone astray, and something had to be done. Even something radical.
“He’s the only president who has the balls to do it, whether it pees in your Cheerios or not. I absolutely trust him,” said Kenny Cook, a Trump supporter who runs a gravestone business in Mineral Point, Mo.
… In Cook’s telling, so much damage beset the U.S. before Trump took office that things cannot be expected to change overnight and perhaps not even by the end of his second term. Eventually, though, he trusts that tariffs will bring manufacturing—and a lost way of life—back to America.
… He [Phil Gross] and his wife Donna, who has built up a 401(k) account over 30 years, were reassured by the quality of Trump’s cabinet. The tariffs, he noted, also had the backing of Kevin O’Leary, a personality on “Shark Tank,” the business-themed reality show, who is known for wearing two wristwatches. “These are wonderful minds,” Gross said.
By Wednesday afternoon, Gross was in full football-spiking mode. “Did you see the market today?” he asked, after Trump’s tactical pause. “I think it’s a stroke of genius.”
… Thelen, 53, is an executive assistant at Behlen Manufacturing, a maker of grain-storage systems and other farm equipment. She seems realistic about the dangers of upending the global trading system. She has a 401(k) account and plays the market on the side. Her company is subject to rising steel prices. “It could take a horrible turn. I mean, it could,” she said.
But the one-time Obama voter saw the bigger risk as a return to the status quo and an economy in which her adult children struggle to pay rent, let alone buy a house. “Right now is not good for middle-class or just-starting-out people,” Thelen said. “Things are not good. So somebody has to come in and break things apart a little.”
Now that the breaking has begun, it is no time to abandon the president. As Tom Boal, Behlen Manufacturing’s president and a fellow Trump supporter, put it, “The train’s running pretty fast. It’d be ugly to jump off now.” …”