Bright Shiny Objects

Commentary by William Alan Reinsch

Published January 20, 2026

I had planned to devote this week's column to a commentary on the Supreme Court's decision on the tariff case, but the court foiled my plan by not issuing its decision. On the decision, or lack of one so far, I would just say the delay is probably due to the chief justice's desire to get as large a majority as possible for an opinion that will have a huge impact on the relationship between congressional and executive authority even if it does not have much economic impact on the victims of the tariffs. Achieving a healthy majority will require careful drafting and much negotiation, which suggests the opinion will be a complicated one and not a clear victory or defeat for the president.

In lieu of a tariff discussion, I was inspired by a CSIS colleague's comment about bright shiny objects, a metaphor for things that attract our attention immediately and cause us to at least temporarily forget about everything else. If you have ever seen a cat chasing the beam from a laser pointer, you will understand the concept. A related tactic is misdirection-something a magician engages in when he draws your attention to one hand while the other hand is actually doing the important work. In politics, a time-tested tactic is changing the subject, recently seen in the Trump administration's persistent efforts to turn public attention away from the Epstein files by providing other distractions.

Those distractions are the bright shiny objects I was referring to, and Trump has repeatedly demonstrated his mastery at deploying them. In the trade world, we have seen this tactic frequently-there is always something new today to make people forget about what happened yesterday. Tariffs were announced last April, but when the bond market sank, they were postponed. Rather than let people ponder the meaning of that, new national security investigations were announced over months on a raft of sectors-semiconductors, copper, aircraft, heavy trucks, polysilicon, kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities, critical minerals, pharmaceuticals, and so on.

And, while everyone was digesting those and trying to understand what they would lead to, the round of bilateral trade negotiations began, first with the United Kingdom and then with a dozen other countries. Each one was announced triumphantly as a great victory for the United States but with few facts revealed to back up that assertion. When facts began to emerge that the agreements were incomplete, nonbinding, and legally unenforceable, the administration's response was to negotiate more of them, and then to renegotiate the earlier ones in order to plug the holes, each time tossing out a new bauble for the public to admire while it forgets about the previous ones.

The twists and turns of the United States-China trade relationship tell a similar story. China is one of the few countries to push back against U.S. tariffs and other punishments, which led to a downward spiral of provocation, retaliation, and counterretaliation, followed by a high-level meeting where the actions of the previous few months were abandoned, a fresh start was declared, and the cycle started over again. Each new tariff, each response, and each meeting provided a new distraction that people concentrated on, forgetting the failure of strategy that caused them in the first place.

The new year has brought no respite. So far-and it is only the middle of the month-we have seen the seizure of Venezuelan oil; threatened 25 percent tariffs on any country doing business with Iran (which would affect more than 150 countries, including the United States); and then, before anyone had time to analyze the potential impact of the Iran tariffs (which now seem to be forgotten, at least temporarily), renewed demands for the acquisition of Greenland immediately followed by the announcement of new tariffs on high-end semiconductors and the possibility of more tariffs in 90 days on the rest of the sector.

Whether these are sound economic moves are open to debate, but they are without question clever political moves. The constant arrival of new bright shiny objects renders any detailed analysis of the previous ones irrelevant. Few facts are released when these decisions are announced, and by the time journalists, academicians, and other analysts have discovered what was actually decided and taken the time to figure out what it means, the public no longer cares because it has moved on to be enthralled by the next new object. Reporters simply cannot keep up.

The consequence of all this is no accountability. Eventually, when historians write about this era, there will be, but that will be too late. The constitution's framers deliberately sought to create a government that acted cautiously. They built in checks and balances designed to make sure that no single part of the government had power disproportionate to the others. When a president pursues so many policies that they flood the zone and erode the checks and balances, making it impossible to keep up, accountability disappears, and the people lose, although they probably won't notice, since there will be a new bright shiny object to admire.

William A. Reinsch is senior adviser and Scholl Chair emeritus with the Economics Program and Scholl Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

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