“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy are the noise before defeat.”

- Chinese general and strategist Sun Tzu, two-and-a-half millennia ago

COMMENT | Donald Trump as US president showed he had neither strategy nor tactics in his Maga war to make America great again. All he had was high-profile, attention-grabbing, astronomical tariffs against the rest of the world, showing he had neither strategy nor tactics - a surefire road to defeat.

It’s ironic that Trump, author of “The Art of The Deal”, needs to be schooled on strategy and tactics by a saying from Sun Tzu, a Chinese military general, strategist, philosopher, and writer, and the author of “The Art of War” from around 500 BCE. It’s a reflection of how shallow his thinking is.

Now he has made some embarrassing retreats in the face of objections by big business, the only constituency he cares about, and his prolific funders, which are likely to be mightily hit by the tariffs which will steeply increase the costs of inputs.

iPhones and tariffs

We have seen how Apple’s iPhones...