It's Monday, April 7, 2025. I'm Albert Mowler, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and

events from a Christian worldview. Well, it's Monday, and we're about to find out how the financial

markets and others are responding to the recently announced tariffs by President Donald Trump.

This is turning out to be a bigger story than many people expected, and perhaps even a bigger

story than the president intended. That's hard to say. When you look at the issue of terrorists,

this has been a consistent preoccupation on the part of Donald Trump going back for decades.

As he pointed out himself over the

weekend, he has been completely consistent about his belief in tariffs. He has been very consistent

about the fact that he sees a trade deficit as unfair to the United States and sees the United States

and U.S. workers as being taken advantage of when it comes to many others in the world.

Other nations, other markets, and in particular the loss of jobs in the United States, with many

of those jobs going overseas, where labor rates are less. But we need to take a step back and

look at this, because I mentioned last week when the tariffs were announced that

this kind of proposal, given the complexity of world markets, is sort of like just throwing

marbles on the table. And they may end up where you want them, or more of them than not may end up

where you want them, but it's really very unpredictable. And the interactions in a complex economy, not only in the world stage, but just here in the United States,

those complexities are so complicated that it's going to be very difficult to know, even for a matter of time,

how this is going to work out.

The president's play is long term.

At least he says that his play is long term.

What would that play be? Well,

let's think about it. His concern going all the way back for decades is that in the neoliberal

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