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What does Donald Trump talk about when he talks about love? For the man presents himself as being full of it. He is associated with a politics of grievance and retribution that has boiled over at times into violence, most infamously in the attack on the Capitol on January 6th 2021. And yet no other president, or presidential candidate, has so wreathed himself in valentines.
In speeches and blast emails, Mr Trump romances his supporters with constant reminders of his love. Among those for whom he has declared his love over the years are “the Hispanics”, “the Saudis”, “the poorly educated” and officers of the Central Intelligence Agency. His heart often has reasons of which reason would appear to know nothing. Like Titania he has tumbled for the most improbable of creatures (“We fell in love,” he gushed of North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jong Un). Like Rihanna he has found love in hopeless places, including the Soviet Union (“you could see it was a country where there was a lot of love”) and even in that crowd on January 6th (“There was a lot of love out there. There was tremendous love”).
Pretty much by definition, presidents are not normal people. But even by their abnormal standard Mr Trump is an unusual character. His detractors like to point out that he had a head start in life as the son of a millionaire real-estate developer. They may not give him enough credit, though, for how through daring, determination and a certain ethical flexibility he willed himself into becoming a billionaire, a flamboyant celebrity, a reality-television star and then the president—how, like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby, Donald Trump “sprang from his Platonic conception of himself”. His insistence on this conception overwhelmed the scoffers at his candidacy eight years ago, bulldozed most Republicans into believing he did not lose in 2020 and may now persuade Americans to return him to the White House.
Biographers of Mr Trump have recounted how, as he discovered he could dominate and bamboozle others, he acquired some contempt for them as well. Once he became known for his wealth people would claw at him for favours. He marvelled, as a candidate in 2015, how easy it was to woo voters with the slightest gesture.
Wayne Barrett, a New York journalist who was probably the closest student of Mr Trump’s rise, fall and fragile recovery into the early 1990s, writes in “Trump” that people who worked for the mogul longed for him to find love but “did not really believe he had the capacity for it.” Mr Barrett quotes one such person as saying Mr Trump was “unaware of his own tragedy” and then continues, “As they saw it, his deeply ingrained remoteness was so much a part of his unexamined life that he neither understood it nor regretted it.” When one friend, irritated by Mr Trump’s uninterest in his troubles, accused him of being a shallow person, he replied, “That’s one of my strengths.”
The Great Gatsby was laid low by love, but that seems to have little chance of undoing The Donald, as his first wife, Ivana Trump, called him. Outsiders can never know what really goes on inside a marriage, but journalists, lawyers and the participants themselves have rendered some of Mr Trump’s marriages more transparent than most. Ideals of love have not tended to predominate.
“If you don’t marry me you’ll ruin your life,” were the words with which Mr Trump proposed to Ivana, according to her book “Raising Trump”. “Continuing love and affection was not a material part” of their nuptial agreement, read a court filing from Mr Trump as the couple split up. “I was bored when she was walking down the aisle,” Mr Trump later recalled of Marla Maples, the woman for whom he left Ivana. “I kept thinking, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’” Probably no Valentine’s Day card will ever invoke Mr Trump’s advice about how best to behave toward women: “You have to treat ’em like shit.”
Outside his family, Mr Trump did not express much love for the people who helped build his fortune. “Look at those losers,” he remarked to an associate as he watched people gambling in one of his Atlantic City casinos, according to “Confidence Man” by Maggie Haberman.
To Mr Trump, hate could be a virtue. Back in 1989, New York’s mayor, Ed Koch, urged citizens not to have rancour toward five black youths arrested for the rape of a white jogger in Central Park. Mr Trump, then beginning to dabble in politics, took out full-page ads in the four daily New York papers calling for reinstatement of the death penalty and declaring, “I want to hate these murderers and I always will.” The youths served years in prison, but even after they were exonerated Mr Trump would not recant, saying in 2014 that they did “not exactly have the pasts of angels”. (Hate can mean never having to say you’re sorry.)
As president in 2020, Mr Trump attended the National Prayer Breakfast, devoted that year to the theme of “loving your enemy”. “I don’t know if I agree,” he mused, when he stepped behind the lectern. He had recently been impeached for the first time and was not inclined to forgive people he thought of as enemies. “They have done everything possible to destroy us,” he said, “and by so doing, very badly hurt our nation.”
Say that you love me
Mr Trump’s love has limit and conditions. He seems to need to feel appreciated and admired, to feel loved, and then he will complete the transaction by declaring his own affection. “I’ll never stop loving you,” he vowed in a recent mass email seeking donations. “Why? Because you’ve always loved me!” That is a deal his supporters are eager to make. They have their own unmet needs for recognition and affirmation. They know their guy is not perfect; in fact, it seems probable that when their love swears he is made of truth they believe him even though they know he lies. They will not risk his love by doubting him. This codependence has become the strongest force in American politics. ■
Guests and attendeess mingle and walk through the atrium during the IMF/World Bank Group Spring Meetings at the IMF headquarters in Washington, DC, on April 24, 2025.
Jim Watson | Afp | Getty Images
After years dominated by the pandemic, supply chains, energy and inflation, there was a new topic topping the agenda at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s Spring Meetings this year: tariffs.
The IMF set the tone by kicking off the week with the release of its latest economic forecasts, which cut growth outlooks for the U.S., U.K. and many Asian countries. While economists, central bankers and politicians have been engaged in panels and behind-the-scenes talks, many are attempting to work out whether trade tensions between China and the U.S. are — or perhaps are not — cooling.
These were some of the main messages from ECB members this week.
Christine Lagarde, European Central Bank president
On inflation and monetary policy:
“We’re heading towards our [inflation] target in the course of 2025, so that disinflationary process is so much on track that we are nearing completion. But we have the shocks, you know, and the shocks will be a dampen on GDP. It’s a negative shock to demand.”
“The net impact on inflation will depend on what countermeasures are eventually taken by Europe. Then we have to take into account the [German] fiscal push by the defense investments, by the infrastructure fund.”
“We have seen successive movements, you know, announcement [of U.S. tariffs], and then a pause, and then some exemptions. So we have to be very attentive… Either we cut, either we pause, but we will be data dependent to the extreme.”
On market moves:
“When we had done our projections, we anticipated that… the dollar would appreciate, the euro would depreciate. It’s not what we saw. And there have been some counter-intuitive movements in various categories.”
“The German market has obviously been shocked in a positive way by the program soon to be put in place by the German government, with a commitment to defense, with a commitment to a big fund for infrastructure development.”
Klaas Knot, The Netherlands Bank president
On tariff uncertainty:
“If I look back over the last 14 years, in the initial days of the pandemic I think that was comparable uncertainty to what we have now.”
“In the short run, it’s crystal clear that the uncertainty that is created by the unpredictability of the tariff actions by the U.S. government works as a strong negative factor for growth. Basically, uncertainty is like a tax without revenue.”
On the inflation impact:
“In the short run, we will have lower growth. We will probably also have lower inflation. As we also see, the euro is appreciating as energy prices have also come down. So together with the sort of negative factor uncertainty in the short run, it’s crystal clear that it will accelerate the disinflation.”
“But in the medium term, the inflation outlook is not all that clear. I think there are still these negative factors. But in the medium term, you might get retaliation. You might get the disruption of global value chains, which might also be inflationary in other parts of the world than the U.S. only. And then, of course, we have the fiscal policy coming in in Europe. So this is actually a time in which you need projections.”
On a June rate cut and market pricing for two more ECB rate cuts in 2025:
“I’m fully open minded. I think it’s way too early to already take a position on June, whether it would be another cut. It will fully depend on these projections.”
“I would need to see a more structured analysis of the impact on the inflation profile ahead of us, and only then can I say whether the market is pricing fair or whether I don’t.”
Robert Holzmann, Austrian National Bank governor
On the need to wait for more data and news on tariffs:
“We have not seen this uncertainty now for years… unless the uncertainty subsides, by the right decisions, we will have to hold back a number of our decisions, and hence, we don’t know yet in what direction monetary policy should be best moved.”
“Before looking at data in detail, the question is, what kind of political decisions will be taken? Is it that we will have some tariff increases? Is it that we will have strong tariff increases? Is it that we will have retribution by high counter tariffs?”
On the ECB’s April rate cut:
“I think there’s a broad consensus [on rates]. But of course, at the margin, people differ.”
“My assessment is that at this time, it wasn’t clear yet to what extent [tariff] countermeasures were being taken. Because with countermeasures in Europe, prices may have increased. Without countermeasures, quite likely the price pressure is downward. And for the time being, we don’t know yet the direction.”
On the direction of interest rates:
“I think if the recent noises about an arrangement [on trade] were to be true, in this case, quite likely it is more towards the downside than the upside with regard to prices. But this can be changed with different decisions and the result of which, we may even imagine in [the] other direction. For the time being, no, it will be down.”
“There may be further cuts this year, but the number is still outstanding.”
Mārtiņš Kazāks, Bank of Latvia governor
On opportunity from tariffs:
“With all this uncertainty and vulnerability, this is also the time of opportunities for Europe.”
“It’s a time for Europe to grasp all the aspects of being an economic superpower and becoming a really fully-fledged political and geopolitical superpower, and this requires doing all the decisions that in the past, were not carried out fully.”
“This requires political will, political guts to make those decisions, and to strengthen the European economy and assert its place in a global world.”
On market reaction to tariffs:
“So far it seems to be relatively orderly … but if one looks at the spillovers to Europe, the financial markets are working more or less fine, we haven’t seen spreads exploding or anything like that.”
“But in terms, however, of the macro scenarios, this uncertainty is extremely elevated in the sense that, given the possible outcomes, the multiple scenarios and their probabilities are very similar with the baseline [tariff] scenario.”
US President Donald Trump speaks during a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister of Norway Jonas Gahr Store in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on April 24, 2025.
Saul Loeb | Afp | Getty Images
President Donald Trump denied that an aggressive bond market sell-off influenced his decision earlier this month to hold off on aggressive “reciprocal” tariffs against U.S. trading partners.
“I wasn’t worried,” Trump said in a Time magazine interview during which he was asked about financial market tumult after his April 2 “liberation day” announcement.
In the decree, Trump slapped 10% across-the-board duties against all U.S. imports and released list of tariffs against dozens of other nations. The extra levies were based on trade deficits the U.S. had against the respective countries and raised fears about inflation, a potential recession and disruption of long-held trade agreements.
Markets recoiled following the release. Treasury yields initially headed lower but quickly snapped higher. The 10-year yield rose half a percentage point in just a few days, one of its quickest moves ever, as investors also ditched stocks and the U.S. dollar.
Ultimately, Trump issued a 90-day stay on the reciprocal tariffs to allow time for negotiation. But he said it wasn’t because of the market tumult.
“No, it wasn’t for that reason,” Trump told Time in the interview from Tuesday that was published Friday. “I’m doing that until we come up with the numbers that I want to come up with. I’ve met with a lot of countries. I’ve talked on the telephone. I don’t even want them to come in.”
Yields have since moved lower, with the 10-year most recently around 4.28%, about a quarter percentage point higher than its recent low. Trump had said when he made the decision to hold off that the bond market had gotten the “yips.”
“The bond market was getting the yips, but I wasn’t. Because I know what we have,” he said. “I know what we have, but I also know we won’t have it for long if we allowed four more years of the gross incompetence. This thing was just running — it was running as a free spirit. This was — this was the most incompetent president in history.”
Though negotiations over tariffs are ongoing, Trump added that he would consider it a “total victory” even if the U.S. has levies as high as 50% still in place a year from now.
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The Bank of England is focused on the potential impact of U.S. tariffs on U.K. economic growth if there is a slowdown in global trade, the central bank’s governor Andrew Bailey said Thursday.
“We’re certainly quite focused on the growth shock,” Bailey told CNBC’s Sara Eisen in an interview at the IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings.
Going into its May 8 monetary policy meeting, the central bank will consider “arguments on both sides” around the impact of tariffs on growth and domestic supply constraints on inflation, Bailey said.
“There is clearly a growth issue we start with, with weak growth … but a big question mark is how much of that is caused by the weak demand, how much of it is caused by a weak supply side,” he continued.
“Because the weak supply side, of course, unfortunately, has the sort of the upside effect on inflation. So we’ve got to balance those two. But I think the trade issue is now the new part of that story.”
Inflation could be pulled in either direction by wider forces, with a redirection of trade exports into other markets being disinflationary, but a retaliation on U.S. tariffs by the U.K. government — which he stressed did not appear likely — pushing up inflation.
Bailey added that he did not see the U.K. as being close to a recession at present, but that it was clear economic uncertainty was weighing on business and consumer confidence.
IMF downgrade
The IMF earlier this week downgraded its 2025 growth forecast for the U.K. to 1.1% from 1.6%, citing the impact of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs, higher borrowing costs and increased energy prices.
However, economic forecasting remains mired in uncertainty as countries engage in negotiations with U.S. officials over Trump’s swingeing universal tariff policy, currently on pause. The U.S. has imposed 25% tariffs on steel, aluminum and autos and a 10% levy on other British exports.
U.K. policymakers have expressed hopes of reaching a trade deal with the White House, with U.S. Vice President J. D. Vance saying there is a “good chance” of an agreement.
Bailey told CNBC on Thursday that he would be “very encouraged if the U.K. does make a deal,” but that its economy was very open and services-oriented, so it would still be impacted by a wider slowdown in growth or trade.
He also noted that inflation would increase from the current 2.6% in the coming readings due to effects from markets such as energy prices and water bills, but that the bump up would be “nothing like what we saw a few years ago.”
The Bank of England held interest rates at 4.5% at its March meeting, before Trump shocked the world with the scale of his tariff announcement.
Markets now see the BOE slashing rates to 4% by its August meeting.