Scott Bessent is having a moment. “Wall Street’s Best Hope to End Trump’s Global Trade War Is One of Its Own,” says The Wall Street Journal. “Bessent Emerges as Man of the Hour Trade Negotiator,” says Bloomberg. “Bessent has emerged as a potential savior, the most senior official standing between Trump and a full-blown global trade war,” explains the Financial Times. But the treasury secretary isn’t going to save us from President Trump’s tariff rampage, and Bessent’s messianic campaign to remove government spending from the private economy will, if Trump embraces it, make everything worse.

Last week, I argued (“Everybody Hates Howard Lutnick”) that the commerce secretary had outmaneuvered Bessent by persuading Trump to impose ruinously high “reciprocal” tariffs on pretty much the entire world. The following day, Trump backed off, announcing a 90-day suspension of the reciprocal tariffs and putting Bessent in charge of negotiating tariff reductions with other nations. The delay prompted the business press’s aforementioned hosannas for Bessent. Everybody loves Bessent to roughly the same degree that everybody hates Lutnick.

But is Bessent riding to the rescue? Various other damaging tariffs remain in place, including a baseline 10 percent tariff against all nations; a 25 percent tariff against foreign-made cars, steel, and aluminum; a somewhat porous 25 percent tariff against Canada and Mexico; and a 145 percent tariff against China. The latter prompted me to run out last week to replace my MacBook Air, iPhone, and iPad in anticipation of their prices soon rising by 145 percent. Then the Trump administration announced late Friday an exemption to the China tariffs for electronics, smartphones, and computers. That made me feel a little silly.

Then Lutnick said Sunday that this electronic exemption was only temporary and that all these items would soon be subjected to “semiconductor tariffs.” A few hours later Trump himself said on Truth Social, “There was no tariff ‘exception’ announced on Friday.” This last statement contradicted not only an

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