Trump, tariffs and a world in transition: Brace for the in-between
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Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
The coming weeks, months, and maybe even years are going to be uncomfortably liminal — an awkward period of transition to a new state of international affairs whose contours and even arrival date remain unknowable.
Why it matters: Liminal periods are, almost by design, excruciating places to inhabit — especially when you don't know when you're going to exit them and come out the other side.
- We all learned that lesson the hard way during the pandemic; now we're learning it again.
Where it stands: The reciprocal tariffs on all countries except for China are paused for 90 days — at which point no one knows what will happen.
- The tariffs on Chinese exports of smartphones and various other electronics are similarly on hold for maybe just a month or so, per Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick on Sunday.
- President Trump said in a Truth Social post that "There was no Tariff "exception" announced on Friday" — notwithstanding the fact that the word "Exceptions" is literally in the headline of his own executive order.
The big picture: A rite of passage, as defined by French ethnographer Arnold van Gennep in 1909, begins with a rite of disengagement where the old order is ended. That's followed, crucially, by a liminal period — the state of transition from one status to another. Finally comes the catharsis: the all-important rite of reengagement, where the new order begins.
- President Trump's Liberation Day, on April 2, was presented as a rite of re-engagement — the first day of the new order. In reality, however, it acted more as a rite of disengagement from the old globalist system.
- We're now in a liminal period, with no real idea what the final end-state is going to look like, or when that's going to happen.
- "People need to know 'when does it end,'" the Australian anthropologist and technologist Genevieve Bell told me during the pandemic, "because being liminal is quite unpleasant."
How it works: Businesses like predictability, because it helps them plan long-term investments and strategies. But the current unpredictability isn't just a lack of predictability. It's also the uniquely torturous feeling you have when someone has opened a parenthesis and then hasn't closed it.
The bottom line: Trump, with his love of improvisational policymaking, tends to open many more parentheses than he ever closes. Which means the current discomfort could last much longer than 90 days.
