What did Donald Trump do today?

He collected no tariffs.

Trump's latest attempts to play "dealmaker" with the entire world have caused chaos in financial markets, created an enormous diplomatic rift with the nation's closest ally and largest trading partner, and threatened the US dollar's status as the world's reserve currency. The justification that Trump has offered is that tariffs (which are taxes paid by American importers, and ultimately by consumers) are somehow better than income taxes. He appears to believe that he can usher in a new age of prosperity akin to the Gilded Age of the 1890s, simply by copying that era's sky-high import taxes. 

As more or less every economist and historian has pointed out, there are a few problems with this logic. For one thing, the Gilded Age is nothing to be nostalgic for if you're not a billionaire "robber baron." By every conceivable measure, Americans are far better off economically now than they were then. 

For another, the federal government of that era was tiny and, for many practical purposes, barely functional because it was limited by its dependence on foreign trade to raise revenue. 

And most importantly of all for the average American, tariffs are consumption taxes. People who spend most of their income on necessities like grocery, fuel, and clothing will pay a far higher share than people—like Trump—who can't possibly spend more than a tiny fraction of their wealth on goods.

But another problem with Trump's plan to fund the government through tariffs arose today: his administration has broken the system used to collect them. Rates have whipsawed back and forth so chaotically and so often in recent months that the collection system has broken down as importers and officials try to figure out which ships carrying goods from which countries are subject to which set of rates. 

For now, it appears that that means that the United States is collecting effectively nothing in the taxes that Trump supposedly wants to fund the entire federal government with, at least from the ports where the vast majority of goods arrive.

Why does this matter?

• "Move fast and break things" isn't a great motto for governments.

• Dollar for dollar, this isn't even the worst incompetence at tax collection Trump has demonstrated in his second term.