With tariffs, Trump's victim complex goes global

The big picture: Never mind that the U.S. boasts the world's largest economy, most powerful military, record household wealth, and historically low unemployment.

• Trump has been remarkably consistent in casting America as a global pushover, including in a 1988 interview with Oprah that resurfaced in the wake of this week's tariff announcement.
• "For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped, and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike," Trump declared in his "Liberation Day" speech Wednesday. "But now it's our turn to prosper."

Zoom in: From uninhabited islands to impoverished enclaves, no country is too small, too irrelevant, or too loyal to escape the wrath of a president who believes America has been cheated for decades.

• That includes Israel, where officials were shocked to face a 17% reciprocal tariff despite removing their own tariffs on the U.S. a day prior.
• It includes Lesotho, a tiny African nation where most people are too poor to import American goods, and which is now facing an existential crisis because of Trump's 50% tariff.
• It even includes the volcanic Australian territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands, whose population of mostly penguins was punished with a 10% tariff.

Zoom out: Trump is right that plenty of countries engage in unfair trade practices, and that globalization has hollowed out key parts of America's industrial base.

• China, the world's second-largest economy, has a long record of trade abuses: IP theft, forced technology transfers, state subsidies and market access restrictions for foreign companies.
• The European Union doesn't cheat the way China does, but it protects its own through generous agricultural subsidies and strict regulatory standards that often double as trade barriers.

But Trump's historic tariff barrage isn't about targeted leverage or negotiated fixes.

• It's about unwinding decades of perceived injustices through blunt force — even against countries incapable of "victimizing" the U.S.
• Trump believes the American people share his grievances, and he's willing to radically remake the global economic order, no matter the cost.

Between the lines: Victimhood — real and imagined — has always been central to Trump's political identity.

• His 2024 presidential campaign was fueled by grievances, beginning with the lie that the 2020 election was rigged against him.
• He's cast every investigation and indictment as a "witch hunt," from Russia to Signalgate.
• He survived an assassination attempt, and used it to turbocharge the persecution narrative that underpins his brand.

"They always said nobody got treated worse than Lincoln," Trump publicly mused in 2020 and many times after.

• "I believe I am treated worse."