Since inauguration day, President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk have wreaked havoc on the federal government. They sent their destructive policial project into a hyperdrive over the weekend, causing shockwaves both at home and abroad. In a period of about 72 hours, the president announced a trade war with two of America’s most critical economic partners, while Musk and his cronies seized control of sensitive federal financial systems, and announced that the president has approved the dissolution of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
International financial markets plummeted on Monday after Trump announced Friday that he would be levying broad tariffs on imported goods from China, Canada, and Mexico. The president said a 25 percent tax on imports from the U.S.’s North American neighbors, and a 10 percent penalty on imports from China, although he announced on Monday that he will delay the implementation of the tariffs on Mexico, and that he is expected to talk with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau later in the day.
According to Trump, the tariffs — which by and large will be paid by American consumers — are intended to curb the flow of illegal drugs and immigration into the United States, as well as to straighten out the trade deficit.
“Anybody that’s against Tariffs, including the Fake News Wall Street Journal, and Hedge Funds, is only against them because these people or entities are controlled by China, or other foreign or domestic companies,” Trump railed Sunday on Truth Social. “Anybody that loves and believes in the United States of America is in favor of Tariffs. They should have never ended, in favor of the Income Tax System, in 1913. The response to Tariffs has been FANTASTIC!”
The response was not, in fact, “fantastic.” All three nations made swift vows to retaliate either with sanctions of their own, or lawsuits. Economists warned that the financial pain intended by the tariffs would be felt by American consumers at grocery stores and gas stations. On Monday morning, international financial markets took a nose dive as investors braced for the impact of major trade disruptions.
The global community’s panic over the international impact of Trump’s trade policy is compounding existing anxiety over the domestic chaos currently roiling the U.S. government. Where Trump spent the weekend picking fights with the U.S.’s biggest economic partners, Musk orchestrated a takeover of two of the the nation’s most influential monetary agencies.
Over the weekend, Musk and his team at DOGE — which is reportedly stuffed with young, inexperienced engineers — succeeded in gaining access to the Federal Reserve’s payment systems. The hugely impactful payment portal handles everything from Social Security and Medicare payments, to federal employees salaries, tax refunds, and payments to other government agencies. The system contains a trove of sensitive identity and financial information on American citizens, and access to it is thus tightly restricted. Musk and his team managed to bully their way into access by ousting longtime nonpartisan officials.
DOGE and Musk have made it clear that gaining access to the system will grant them the ability to unilaterally cut off any financial transactions. The first example of how such access might be weaponized came hours later, when the billionaire and his minions executed a potentially permanent shutdown of USAID, the American government’s largest distributor of civilian foreign aid.
“We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Musk wrote on X early Monday morning. “Could [have] gone to some great parties. Did that instead.”
After members of the DOGE team were barred by USAID staff from accessing systems and materials they did not have clearance to view, the Trump administration placed two senior USAID security officials on administrative leave. By Monday morning, USAID employees were being told not to come to work, the agency’s website had been shuttered, and the building had been stripped of its logos and branding.
“With regards to the USAID stuff, I went over it with [Trump] in detail and he agreed that we should shut it down,” Musk said in an X Spaces conversation on Monday.
USAID is tasked with distributing billions of dollars in foreign aid on an annual basis, and is a central component of the federal government’s “soft power” international development strategy. The agency is, of course, not above reproach, but the wholesale elimination of USAID in the span of a weekend has prompted concern from experts about how the sudden vacuum of American foreign aid will be viewed by the nation’s adversaries.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, warned that “the immediate consequences of this are cataclysmic. Malnourished babies who depend on U.S. aid will die. Anti-terrorism programs will shut down and our most deadly enemies will get stronger. Diseases that threaten the U.S. will go unabated and reach our shores faster.”
“China will fill the void,” he added on social media, “as developing countries will now ONLY be able to rely on China for help, they will cut more deals with Beijing to give them control of ports, critical mineral deposits, etc. U.S. power will shrink. U.S. jobs will be lost.”