US President Donald Trump holds a chart as he delivers remarks on reciprocal tariffs during an event in the Rose Garden

US President Donald Trump holds a chart as he delivers remarks on reciprocal tariffs during an event in the Rose Garden entitled “Make America Wealthy Again” at the White House in Washington, DC, on April 2, 2025. Trump geared up to unveil sweeping new “Liberation Day” tariffs in a move that threatens to ignite a devastating global trade war. Key US trading partners including the European Union and Britain said they were preparing their responses to Trump’s escalation, as nervous markets fell in Europe and America.

While Musk may ultimately make peace with the nationalist MAGA faction, Trump’s macroeconomic policies pose perhaps a greater contradiction for the party of Make America Wealthy Again. On Wednesday, Trump announced sweeping tariffs on almost every country in the world. The move is part of a massive macroeconomic restructuring that has left the entire U.S. economy in a paralyzed state of uncertainty, and it’s not clear if it jives with an effort at autocratic consolidation.

“We haven’t seen anyone try to do both of those at the same time,” Huq said. “It’s not clear how these two projects interact with each other. It’s too early to tell, but if the economic project goes belly up, that has implications for the political project.”

But all that is in the future. The more immediate thing that those who’ve watched and studied the rise of 21st century autocrats want the public to recognize, is simply what is actually happening here.

“Leaders don’t do this and then walk away and say, ‘Now we’re going to have a normal election,’” Cummings said.

“People are looking for this ‘crossing the Rubicon’ moment,” Scheppele said. “When all this stuff happens under legal language, there’s all kinds of ways to disguise what you’re doing. So that leaves people wondering, ‘When would this cross the line from what scholars call constitutional hardball into the ‘oh, my God’ dictator-for-life world?’ And I think we’re already there.”

Scheppele asks her students what would make them think that Trump had crossed the line into autocracy or dictator behavior. They gave a variety of answers like disobeying the Supreme Court or running for a third term, she says. But those would be too late.