Right-wingers like Elon Musk are fond of a Matrix analogy for the world: You’ve got a choice between two pills, one’s blue and one’s red. If you take the red one, you’ll be suddenly awake to the dark reality behind the fiction that is the Western neoliberal lived experience.

If you’re determined to use movie analogies, and you like the red/blue binary choice motif, it’s probably more accurate to think of the right’s efforts to dismantle the post-War, US-led global economic and security architecture as a Martin Riggs-style choice between cutting the red wire and the blue wire. If you’re old enough to be a fan of the Lethal Weapon franchise, you’re laughing.

As you’ve probably noticed, there’s a lot of hand-wringing and sweating going on among market participants terrified that Trump, like Riggs, might not actually know which wire to cut, even as he claims otherwise. Hence what Scott Bessent Thursday described as “a little bit of volatility over three weeks.”

Scott’s not concerned about that. The volatility, I mean. “We’re focused on the real economy,” he lied, in remarks to CNBC’s Sara Eisen who, in a testament to the fact that we’re all getting very, very old, is 40 now.

It’s understandable that Bessent’s not bothered by volatility brought on by Trump’s gamble. After all, Bessent’s a fund manager, and that profession entails making risky bets with other people’s money, knowing that however it turns out, you’re going to be rich regardless.

Not everybody’s as sure as Bessent isn’t (see what I did there?) that this’ll work out for the better. Ed Yardeni, for example, lowered his best-case S&P price target Thursday to 6,400 from a Street-high 7,000 citing (you guessed it) tariffs.

“It has dawned on Wall Street (and us!) that President Trump’s tariffs aren’t negotiating chips to help the US lower tariffs around the world, promoting free trade,” Ed wrote. Instead, he went on, the tariffs are “trade barriers, triggering other countries to respond in kind, and they jeopardize US inflation and economic growth.”

Yes, tariffs are trade barriers, as it turns out. Who knew?! (I’m just kidding, Ed. You seem like a good guy.)

Yardeni went on, in the same note, to suggest US trade policy’s in disarray currently, and cautioned investors not to ignore stagflation risks. “Trump 2.0,” at least on the implementation side, looks “haphazard,” he added.

On Thursday, Trump threatened to impose a 200% tariff on French wine and champagne, which is a real kick in the… well, groin, I’ll say groin, to everyone who knows good wine and champagne, and also to restaurants which have to stock them.

In a characteristically wild TruthSocial message, Trump called the EU “hostile and abusive,” citing the bloc’s “nasty” whiskey levies which he wants removed “immediately” under threat of draconian duties on “all” alcoholic products from France. “This will be great for the Wine and Champagne businesses in the US,” he added.

That’s a prime example of why, in yesterday’s Daily, I recycled my own editorial about specialization, as published here last month. Notwithstanding some world-class Cabs, the US simply can’t create the same quality of wine as France. It’s impossible. And, again, restaurants all around the country have to stock French wine and champagne.

When you order a glass of wine at a restaurant, the markup’s egregious. It’s not quite as bad when you order a bottle, but it’s still at least double (and usually more) the price you’d pay if you bought it yourself, at the store. If that wine’s subject to a 200% tariff, you’re going to be paying somewhere in the neighborhood of a 400% or 500% markup to the cost of that bottle at the store prior to the tariffs if you order it, by the glass, under Trump’s tariff regime at a restaurant.

Bessent doesn’t see why that’s a problem. “One or two items with one trading bloc, I’m not sure why that’s a big deal,” he told CNBC. Well, Scott, it’s not a big deal if you’re worth $500 million. Nothing is. For the rest of us, though, paying $27 a glass for Beaujolais with dinner is a pretty bitter red pill to swallow.