When Trump Floods His Own Zone - 2/3/25

As I mentioned last week, Donald Trump’s advisors are fond of the phrase “flooding the zone” to describe the sheer volume of their boss’ activity. They believe, with some justification, that if he generates a sufficient amount of controversial policy and political news each day, that the sheer volume of those pronouncements will overwhelm his opponents (as well as the news media and most voters), allowing many of his less popular ideas to slip by without notice or debate.

Last week, I wrote about how lost and confused the Democrats appeared in the face of this onslaught. But after Trump’s second week in office, we are beginning to see the downsides of the old/new president’s unrelenting offensive. Just as his various audiences inevitably miss some of his most debatable and less popular ideas, they’re also not going to notice some of the things that the White House wants them to see.

In each of Trump’s first two weeks, we saw an example of this, where the sheer volume of news and controversy overshadowed the president’s policy and communications goals. On his first full day in office, Trump held a news conference with a bevy of technology and finance leaders to announce a joint venture investment of more than $500 billion in America’s work on Artificial Intelligence infrastructure. The half-trillion dollar Stargate project could have driven an immense amount of favorable news coverage, both here in the U.S. and internationally, and it would have been of especially significant value just days before a Chinese company announced their own AI breakthrough.

But that was also the day that the president announced his plans to overturn the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing citizenship to those infants who are born in this country. It’s not difficult to predict which story dominated the political conversation, and Trump’s AI project was buried under coverage of the judicial, constitutional and moral questions of granting citizenship. Trump has attracted the broadest levels of public support in response to his calls for sealing the U.S.-Mexico border and deporting undocumented immigrants, but shifting the migration discussion to whether newborns should be citizens detracts from reforms where he is on much firmer ground with the voters.

Last week, the president’s zone flooding strategy washed back on the White House again. This time it was the release of the now-infamous memo from Trump’s appointees in the Office of Management and Budget calling for an overall freeze of government spending. The ensuing firestorm forced the White House to pull back quickly, offering several qualifying details and explanations that did little to quell the furor. But even in an electorate that is inclined to back Trump’s efforts to reduce the size of government, the argument surrounding this ill-defined pronouncement completely drowned out almost everything else the administration was trying to talk about until they beat a hasty retreat.

But the biggest test of the “flood the zone” strategy is just beginning to unfold. Over the weekend, Trump announced his long-anticipated plan to raise tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico, and China. Even during the campaign, this was one of his least-popular proposals, receiving a skeptical response from both the voters and the stock market. While the president has been referencing these goals consistently for several weeks, the public’s attention to the intricacies of international trade has been much less than what they have seen about Trump’s much more provocative idea for Greenland, Panama, and Canada.

Because most Americans have not heard the president’s arguments in favor of these trade restrictions, public opinion polls still show little enthusiasm for the idea. And while Trump has many off-ramps to take if he decides that such a confrontational approach is not such a good idea, most economic experts are in agreement that reducing imports by increasing tariffs is a sure-fire way to dramatically increase inflation on food, cars, construction materials, medical equipment and other keys to a sound economy and stable society.

With the possible exception of border policy, Trump’s attacks on the Biden Administration’s mishandling of inflation may have been his strongest argument in last year’s election. The Democrats were somewhat energized by his overstep on the government freeze last week, but the opportunity to mount a counter-offensive against the upcoming likely price hikes is a test to see whether they are finally beginning to find their voice after months of recriminations, excuses, and finger-pointing. Trump is opening a door for them: we’ll see if they are able to step through it.