He Clapped A 90

In one of my many careers, I worked as a road surveyor. In the 60s I helped build sections of I-95, 836, and Alligator Alley in south Florida. I also did real estate surveying, laying out new housing and verifying existing properties for sales or disputes. We had a method to guess the location of an existing spot that was approximately 90 degrees off a baseline. We called it, “clapping a 90."

We would stand with arms spread along the baseline and bring our hands together in front of us. You could then sight down the two joined hands to send someone in the right direction. That person could pace off roughly five feet with every other footfall along that line to measure an approximate distance. When you stopped at that estimated point, you could then dig for a previously established property corner.

The property corner once found, would then be verified by accurate measurement of the platted distance and a transit would be used to turn a more accurate angle from the known baseline. These points would be further verified from established points and benchmarks before signing off on the work.

When it came to tariffs, it appears that Donald Trump clapped a 90. He then broke out a sand wedge, took a wild swing, sent the ball flying, and made his decision for the direction of the entire nation. Now he calls this process his “intuition.” Given the ensuing global meltdown and chaos in the marketplace, not to mention the fact that his financial money pit sources just got taken to the proverbial cleaners, he has had to rethink his intuition.

He states that people were getting “a little yippy” and “afraid.” He has a revised plan that is a revision of the last revision to the last revised plan. He will now back off tariffs on most nations. Pundits have said he may have gotten this new direction from the kid Elon Musk carried on his shoulders in that Oval Office press conference. Where that kid got his information is unknown, but he was observed picking his nose.

Trump also defended his initial push for sweeping tariffs, saying the trade environment was “not sustainable” and that “somebody had to pull the trigger. I was willing to pull the trigger. It is a tribute to Trump’s true greatness that he can fire a canon that destroys trillions of dollars of investment value and then claim the moral high ground when he puts an end to it. What a mensch.

He was asked how he might determine exemptions for companies hard hit by the tariffs he said you couldn’t use technical criteria and that you needed to do it, “Just instinctively.” “It’s really more of an instinct.” This statement followed his announcement of a 90-day pause of tariffs. Ergo, he “clapped a 90.”