What exactly is the point of the Trump trade war? Asking this question to different people in the White House gets you different answers, and Trump himself (as usual) contradicts himself almost daily, attempting to have things both ways. The clueless nature of the entire exercise is becoming more and more apparent as the first week of the Trump trade war draws to a close.

Is the whole thing a bargaining ploy to get other countries to agree to more favorable terms? Or is it a longer-term policy designed to bring all those factories back to America? It really can't be both at the same time, since these are kind of mutually exclusive.

If the whole point is to get better trade deals, then once those trade deals are struck then the tariffs go away -- which removes the incentive to bring the factories home. If the tariffs are designed to be permanent, then it won't matter what other countries offer, because the tariffs will remain no matter what deal they try to strike with us.

Businesses that build things in factories have to plan years in advance. They cannot do so right now, because nobody knows what next week will bring, much less next year. Making the financial commitment to build a new factory is expensive, but if the tariffs are all going to disappear after trade deals are struck then that defeats the purpose of planning to build a new factory in America. Businesses hate such uncertainty, because it makes it impossible for them to develop long-term plans.

There's a fundamental reason factories are built in other countries, and that is that it is cheaper to do so. Labor costs are much lower, so products can be built for less money. Bringing those factories back to America would mean higher labor costs, and thus higher prices for the same product. So a company has to weigh whether the higher costs of building a product in America would work out to be cheaper than the lower cost of building it abroad, plus the new tariff. But they can't make that calculation if nobody knows how long the tariffs are designed to last.

Either way -- no matter what the company decides, it is going to translate to higher prices for American consumers for the same goods. Either they'll pay a premium because of the high costs of American labor or they'll pay the premium of the new tariff. No matter what happens, the price goes up.

Businesses are looking to the White House for some sort of answer on what the plan actually is, but they're getting nothing but conflicting stories, cluelessness, and uncertainty in response (emphasis in original):

On Sunday, economic adviser Kevin Hassett said the tariffs were a temporary negotiating ploy, to be lifted as soon as countries acceded to Trump's (unspecified) demands. "More than 50 countries have reached out to the president to begin a negotiation," he said. On another network, at virtually the same time, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick suggested the tariffs would be permanent, because Trump needs them to revive U.S. manufacturing.

Elsewhere, trade adviser Peter Navarro endorsed the permanency part, adding that Trump wants the revenue from perpetual tariffs to pay for his plutocratic income-tax cuts. Navarro told Fox News the tariffs would generate "$6 trillion to $7 trillion over the 10-year period," citing widely debunked figures that he appears to have pulled from thin air.

Trump is no help in all of this, as he thinks he can have it both ways at once (spoiler: he can't):

"They can both be true. There can be permanent tariffs and there can also be negotiations," the president said on Monday as he welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House.

Except... if the tariffs are permanent, then what exactly is there for the other countries to negotiate for?

Today, Trump's top trade official testified before a Senate committee. To say that he failed to clarify things is an understatement, and that's coming from the Republicans on the committee:

Their unease, which extends from moderate swing votes to staunch Trump allies, was especially clear Tuesday as senators questioned the president's trade representative, Jamieson Greer, in a Finance Committee hearing. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) told The Washington Post afterward that he was not reassured by Greer's testimony and doesn't think many Republicans were.

"I don't quite understand the strategy," Johnson said, "and I'm not sure anybody else does."

Democrats were even more direct about the cluelessness. The White House has been bragging that dozens of countries (sometimes 50, sometimes 60 or more) have been calling up and begging for new trade deals, but they never give any sort of prediction of how long it will take to achieve any of these (which the White House has said will be unique deals for each country). Greer was asked about this today:

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nevada) was especially scathing in her back-and-forth with Greer, cutting him off at some points and asking him to be "intellectually honest." She asked Greer how long it took to negotiate the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement from Trump's first term.

Greer said it took two years working at "breakneck speed."

"And now you're telling us you have nearly 50 countries coming to you, approaching you to enter a negotiation," Cortez Masto scoffed, "and you think that you can do that overnight?... Let's be realistic."

There has been no explanation throughout all of this as to the price the American people can expect to pay, the depth of the pain, how long the pain is going to last, or even when Trump will declare some sort of "victory" and decide to end the chaos. Meanwhile, the voters can expect to get exactly the opposite of what they voted for:

Trump won in November because many voters saw him as an antidote to their economic malaise; as a candidate, he frequently promised to lower Americans' everyday prices. But as president, he has chosen instead to plunge the country into fresh financial chaos, while insisting the market losses as a result of his tariffs are "medicine" Americans need to take.

"Trump was elected in part to lower inflation and juice the economy," said GOP pollster Whit Ayres. "Higher prices and slower growth are exactly the opposite of what Americans voted for."

The economic turbulence unleashed by the White House's blanket tariffs is sending shudders through every level of the Republican Party. Alarmed officials worry the administration is driving the U.S. toward recession and dooming the GOP's midterm chances -- yet they have no idea what will convince Trump to change course.

In other words: cluelessness abounds. And there doesn't seem to be any end in sight. Welcome to the Trump economy, folks! You didn't really want to retire any time soon, did you?

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant