Reactions to the seemingly chaotic roll out of President Trump’s tariffs have varied between the smug and knowing nods of the elite and bafflement of politicians, with most decrying the lack of planning. I’d argue there was a plan, and that plan was part of the problem.

To help illustrate what I mean, consider some recent examples of planning from the world of popular television series.

Lack of planning is an obvious problem—whether it is politicians doing policy by the seat of their pants or showrunners making it up as they go along in the mode of the series Lost, or Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin, where one has no idea how to tie up all the loose ends to produce a satisfactory ending. What is less often considered are the problems inherent in rigidly sticking to a plan, even if that plan is initially solid and well-considered. Take, for example, Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That series was incredibly influential, but few fans loved the ending.

Most Buffy fans defaulted to blaming Whedon’s lack of planning for the lacklustre second half of the series’ seventh and last season. But in interviews, Whedon insisted in that this was the ending he’d always had in mind since the first episode. I’m inclined to believe him. Whedon’s problem was that by the time the ending of Buffy (which, it should be noted, had been extended from a planned five to seven seasons) came along, the tone, complexity and overall character of the show had evolved so far beyond the intial offering that the planned ending, which would have complemented season one, no longer fit.

I suspect the partially botched Trump tariffs fell victim to the peril of planning that Whedon suffered in his writing of his series. The administration hit the ground running at a furious pace. They had obviously spent years lining up an agenda aiming to overwhelm opposition by a sort of political Blitzkrieg. It seems they may have had the date for the launch of the tariff policy slotted into their calendars before the inauguration. They even had the “Liberation Day” PR spin ready to go. Along the way, however, circumstances and the plot had changed a bit, or rather they had not.

The goal of the tariffs is to resurrect the industry and manufacturing that have been outsourced since the introduction of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) during the Clinton administration and, in particular, the accession of China to the World Trade Organization in 2001. But the reality of tariffs is that they are an exercise in foreign policy, and a quite tricky excercise to boot.

The real target for the policy of tariffs is the main geopolitical and economic rival of the United States, China. But China not only produces goods the U.S. depends on, it also holds important resources, like rare earth minerals. For the tariff ploy to have worked, the U.S. would have needed to have alternate suppliers for those resources already lined up, in addition to food, fertilizer, and energy to bring inflation down and buffer any economic shocks that might result from the policy. In other words, they needed Russia.

Anyone who’s followed the diplomatic dance on Ukraine will have understood early on that the so called Rare Earth Deal the Trump administration had demanded that Ukraine sign was unworkable. Most of the resources are in Russian held territories, and it would take years to develop them. In short, Ukraine can’t deliver what the U.S. needs to confront China, not least geopolitically. Only Russia can. The fundamental problem is the same Henry Kissinger identified—to have any influence in Eurasia the U.S. needs to pry Russia and China apart.

It’s also quite obvious that Trump’s aim was to follow the basic Kissinger playbook. But come “Liberation Day” the Russia deal was still missing. Again, no serious analyst took Trump’s claim to be able to bring the war in Ukraine to an end on day one as anything other than rhetoric. But it’s also obvious that Trump genuinely expected to have a deal in place by now, and thus far more leverage to exercise in the tariff game. In part the conflict is simply more intractable than he initially imagined, but part of the blame is on Trump himself.

For fear of getting politically keelhauled for being a Putin stooge and a Russian “Manchurian Candidate,” as he was throughout his first term, Trump has attempted to manuever around the Europeans, Congress, and the neoconservatives in his own party. But that bit of Kabuki theatre has itself become more complex and tangled, even within his own administration, with people like Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, pushing for an impossibly hard line in negotiations with Russia.

You may ask what the problem is in pushing the Russians for concessions. The answer is the same Trump delivered to Ukrainian president Zelensky in the infamous White House spat. “You have no cards to play,” Trump explained to Zelenksy. Well, neither does the U.S. with respect to Russia. Russia is winning on the battlefield. Russia has already weathered the bulk of sanctions the West has thrown at it. It will be politically problematic for Trump to even maintain economic and military support for Ukraine, far less increase it, when Biden’s budget allocations shortly run out. MAGA would revolt.

The upshot is that tariff “Liberation Day” began as planned. But the preconditions for its success were missing. And rather than postponing, and risk losing the political momentum, they stuck to the plan. If the agenda can be salvaged at this point is anybody’s guess.