Image: keystone
analysis
The US President had a bad week.
February 13, 2026, 12:00 p.mFebruary 13, 2026, 12:00 p.m
Once again, Donald Trump is living up to his TACO image. As the Financial Times reports, the US President wants to reduce tariffs on steel and aluminum. Last summer he imposed a punitive tariff of 50 percent on the import of these goods.
This shows that even Trump, who supposedly rules like a dictator, cannot resist the economic and political forces with impunity. It is now clear that 90 percent of the tariffs have to be borne by American consumers and that they are understandably angry.
Back off: TACO Trump.
“According to a Pew Research Center survey, more than 70 percent of American adults rate economic conditions as fair to poor,” according to the Financial Times. “Around 52 percent of Americans believe that Trump’s economic policies have made their situation worse.”
In addition, Trump’s arbitrary imposition of tariffs has caused uncontrollable chaos. The “Financial Times” gives the example of a European entrepreneur who exported four containers with identical contents to the USA and was hit with four different tariff rates.
It’s not just consumers who are protesting against Trump’s tariff policy. There was a mini-rebellion in the House of Representatives this week. Six Republican MPs voted with the Democrats for a law that would lift tariffs against Canada. The president can veto it. Nevertheless, he raged and made wild threats against the renegades.
With good reason, as the Wall Street Journal commented on the event with the words: “Marks last Wednesday as an important date, the beginning of a rebellion against President Trump’s tariffs. Maybe it’s even the start of a larger revolt.”
The president suffered a serious defeat not only in Congress. He also had to pull back on the immigration issue, which was so important to him. The ICE immigration police have to leave Minneapolis. The population’s resistance to the masked thugs has become too great.
Masked ICE agents in Minnesota.Image: keystone
Here too, the political collateral damage has not yet been eliminated. Because the President and the Republicans are not prepared to equip the ICE hooligans with cameras and name tags like normal police officers, there is once again a threat of a partial shutdown in the USA.
Once again, Trump is acting against the will of the people. “According to an Associated Press poll this month, 62 percent of Americans believe Trump has gone too far in sending immigration agents to American cities,” writes the Washington Post.
In the case of the unfortunate Epstein Files, there is still no light at the end of the tunnel. Although Justice Minister Pam Bondi’s attempts at cover-up are almost grotesque, new, mostly disgusting details come to light every day. Nicole Hammer, a history professor at Vanderbilt University, comments on this in the New York Times as follows:
“We have learned a lot about the Epstein scandal in recent years. Still, people are shocked at how much the elite have participated in this world. This is a corruption the extent of which the public can only now fully see.”
The Epstein scandal primarily involves men from all political, economic and scientific areas. Meanwhile, the still-unexplained role Trump played in this is likely to spawn a ton of new conspiracy theories, as Hammer explains.
Feels vindicated: Marjorie Taylor Greene.Image: keystone
In fact, the conspiracy theorists feel confirmed. Former MP Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has turned Trump groupie into critic, explains: “The files give us an insight into a world that we were convinced existed. But we were called conspiracy theorists because of it.”
It’s not just in the big areas – tariffs, ICE and Epstein – that Trump has suffered serious defeats. He also had to go downstairs to supposedly sideshows. For example, a federal judge prohibited him from cutting $600 million from the health care budgets of four Democratic states – California, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota.
Meanwhile, another federal judge has dismissed Pete Hegseth. The unfortunate Secretary of Defense wanted to demote Mark Kelly, a war hero and senator from Arizona, because he and other Democratic politicians had warned soldiers in a video that they were allowed to refuse illegal orders. A grand jury had previously refused to indict Kelly for alleged treason.
Even the financial markets don’t mean well to Trump this week. Uncertain about the latest developments in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), tech stocks in particular lost significant value. Very dark clouds have also gathered on the crypto front.
A power struggle is emerging between stablecoin enthusiasts and the banks. Traditional financial institutions want to prevent interest from being paid on stablecoin deposits.
Unsettled: Traders on the New York Stock Exchange.Image: keystone
AI is not only causing uncertainty in the financial markets. The rapid developments of recent times could mean that the world of work will change completely within a few years. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, an emerging AI company, states: “AI will be able to take on a wide range of human thinking abilities – perhaps all of them.”
In the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan also quotes Matt Shumer, an AI investor, as saying: “If you do most of your job in front of a screen (reading, writing, analyzing, making decisions using a keyboard), then AI will soon take a significant part of that away from you.”
Many people rightly fear that Trump will turn the USA into an authoritarian state and that he cannot be stopped along the way. But this week’s events show that he, too, cannot escape political gravity – and that American democracy may not be so easily unhinged after all.