Donald Trump has never let go of the idea that the powers of the presidency are no different than the powers he has as the owner of a private company.

Sorry, Mr. President. They aren’t one and the same.

This glaring misconception came into full view this week when Trump claimed that he, not the states’ governors, had the power to decide when to end the lockdowns and reopen their economies.

“When somebody’s the president of the United States, the authority is total,” Trump said at the Monday evening’s coronavirus task force briefing, which has increasing devolved into the Trump Daily Show. “And that’s the way it’s got to be.”

Constitutional authority

Anyone with a cursory knowledge of the U.S. Constitution knows that’s not the way it’s got to be. The powers not specifically delegated to the United States “are reserved to the states, or to the people,” as specified in the 10th Amendment to the Constitution.

Trump seemed to walk back his claim of total authority on Tuesday, acknowledging that the governors would determine how and when to reopen schools and businesses in their respective states.

But his first instinct is always to claim his authority to do whatever he pleases. As he once said, “I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”

Trump’s failure to differentiate the public from the private spills over into the policy realm as well. Take his views on trade, for example. Trump assumes that what’s good for Trump Inc. must be good for USA Inc.

Protectionist views

A few years ago, I was trying to understand Trump’s long-held protectionist views on trade and preference for tariffs.

Here’s a president whose positions blow with the wind, sometimes shifting from one day to the next, yet his opposition to free trade is perhaps the only issue on which he has been consistent dating back to the 1980s. (He has changed party affiliation five times and was pro-choice before he flipped on a dime to become pro-life to run as a Republican candidate for president.)

The explanation for Trump’s mercantilist trade views that made the most sense to me was one offered by Don Boudreaux, senior fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center and professor of economics at George Mason.

Boudreaux said that Trump was conflating Trump Inc. and USA Inc.

His ideas on trade reflect a “natural businessman’s view of the world,” he told me at the time. “Trump Inc. does better the more it sells, the less it buys in inputs. He takes that same view and applies it to the U.S.”

Of course, the situations aren’t comparable at all. When it comes to the country, trade isn’t a zero-sum game, as Trump imagines. A nation doesn’t “lose” when it chooses to import cheap goods from abroad instead of using scarce resources to manufacture anything and everything on our shores.

Countries are best served by producing goods and services in which they have a comparative advantage. The U.S. may have an absolute advantage in producing robotics and T-shirts, but it behooves us to focus on robotics and import the T-shirts from low-wage countries.

In Trump’s eyes, the U.S. trade deficit is a sign of “losing,” of being ripped off.

That idea is hard to square with reality. A wider U.S. trade deficit is generally associated with a strong economy. All it takes is a good recession to curtail domestic demand and reduce the deficit. The decline in the February trade deficit is a manifestation of the depressing effect the coronavirus is having on global commerce and economic growth. It is not a sign of “winning,” as Trump likes to frame it.

You’re fired!

Trump treats the White House like the Trump Organization when it comes to staffing decisions as well.

As president, he has the right to hire and fire whom he chooses, but his decisions are driven by what he perceives to be good for him, not for the nation. He chooses to hire and retain those who support him and flatter his ego, not necessarily those with expertise in the given field.

This is a man who claims to know more than the experts when it comes to taxes, the debt, money, banking, jobs, trade, technology, the military, ISIS, drones, social media, infrastructure, politics, lawsuits, renewable energy: you name it.

He disparages career civil servants with years of experience in government as the “Deep State.”

As his recent string of firings of independent inspectors general suggests, Trump demands fealty and doesn’t tolerate dissent. Two weeks ago, he fired Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community’s IG, who brought a whistleblower complaint to Congress about Trump’s attempt to extort Ukraine into investigating his political rival, which led to Trump’s impeachment.

A few days later, Trump dismissed Glenn Fine, the Defense Department’s acting IG who was slated to chair the new Pandemic Response Accountability Committee overseeing the implementation of the $2.2 trillion relief package, or CARES Act.

Trump cited “reports of bias” as reason for his actions, but since his impeachment, the president has been rooting out anyone he perceives to be disloyal.

Just yesterday, Trump even threatened to adjourn Congress so he could install an array of executive branch nominees without the need for Senate approval.

In his fourth year as president, Trump shows no sign of differentiating between what he perceives to be his personal self-interest and the national interest. By now it should have become apparent that the two are not the same.