Imagine a cowboy on a turnpike, six-shooter in one hand, a foreclosure notice in the other, galloping toward Beijing on a horse he can’t afford to feed — that’s the spirit of US President Donald Trump’s new trade plan.

Now picture a man in a red hat, standing at the border, waving a pistol made of tax forms, shouting: “This is how we beat China!” before slapping a 60 per cent tariff on a blender made in Ohio. This is Trump’s performance art of policy – and the audience? Poor American households.

Scholars call it “transgressive enjoyment”. Supporters call it “finally a president who tells it like it is”. Economists call it “Jesus Christ, not again”.

This is the logic of lighting your kitchen on fire so the neighbours stop stealing your recipes.

The longest 100 days have been a postmodern opera of economic sadomasochism, where the tariff plan is less about trade and more about libidinal economics – the national thrill of self-sabotage masquerading as rebellion.

As Freudians might note, there is ‘jouissance’ – a French term for a libidinal “enjoyment” that goes beyond rational benefit – in this pain. Americans are told to suffer proudly, to pay more for less, and to feel clean about it.

What Trumpism offers is a high — a collective orgasm of grievance, decked out in red hats and shattered supply chains. It has morphed into a national revenge fantasy: you may be broke, but at least the other guy’s eating dirt too. It’s revenge for the very theft of enjoyment.

In Trump’s America, schadenfreude costs less than a carton of eggs, and eggs are $7 a dozen.

On the world stage, Trump is acting like a man holding a smoke bomb and demanding respect. Allies have responded to his tariff threats by building coalitions, excluding Washington.

The WTO? Irrelevant. NATO? Suspicious. Canada? Suspiciously polite. Trump’s diplomacy is now a blend of 1980s action movies and apocalyptic sermons. "They laughed at me in Davos.