The Slatest

Today’s Impeach-O-Meter: Potentially Crippling Trade War Edition

Donald and Melania Trump arrive in Warsaw on Wednesday.

Karol Serewis/Gallo Images Poland/Getty Images

In the tradition of the Clintonometer and the Trump Apocalypse Watch, the Impeach-O-Meter is a wildly subjective and speculative daily estimate of the likelihood that Donald Trump leaves office before his term ends, whether by being impeached (and convicted) or by resigning under threat of same.

Here’s the context in which Trump arrived in Poland today for the G20 trade summit:

  • He’s been tweeting ominously about bad trade deals.
  • He’s reportedly considering imposing a 20 percent tariff on steel that’s been proposed by white nationalist adviser Steve Bannon. The tariff—and the general “trade war” that could ensue—would most directly involve China but could also have a deleterious effect on the economies of allies such as Germany, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and the U.K., not to mention the U.S. itself.
  • Angela Merkel has been criticizing him.

International trade is a complicated issue, and reasonable people can disagree in good faith about whether the trade agreements that the U.S. has entered into have been unfair to American workers. However, I think reasonable people of good faith can also agree that we don’t want the U.S.’s response to these issues to be crafted by a white-power lunatic and an unstable reality-TV star whose main interest is getting back at devious Chinese people and/or the German lady.

However, until Trump actually causes a global economic meltdown because of xenophobia and personal animus, we’ll leave the meter where it is.

Photo illustration by Natalie Matthews-Ramo. Photos by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, Win McNamee/Getty Images, Chris Kleponis-Pool/Getty Images, Drew Angerer/Getty Images, and Peter Parks-Pool/Getty Images.

Photo illustration by Natalie Matthews-Ramo. Photos by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, Win McNamee/Getty Images, Chris Kleponis-Pool/Getty Images, Drew Angerer/Getty Images, and Peter Parks-Pool/Getty Images.