It’s hard to imagine a better quick story summing up the Donald Trump administration than the one that broke recently about a bill the White House was preparing to, as expat Australian journalist Jonathan Swan at the Axios news website put it, ‘‘declare America’s abandonment of fundamental World Trade Organisation rules’’ by giving the President authority to break those rules unilaterally.

Let’s see: The policy is nuts; virtually all experts, both in trade and in foreign policy, believe global trade is very good for the US. In fact, according to Swan’s reporting, almost everyone in the White House thinks the bill ‘‘is unrealistic or unworkable’’.

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Why does it exist, then? Because Trump ordered it, and sometimes the best way to mollify a President is to give him what he wants - very slowly, and without anything actually happening. Apparently this thing has been kicking around for months. The bill has virtually no chance whatsoever of being enacted into law.

The draft bill has a title, the United States Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act, which yields an acronym that had every Twitter wag making fart jokes. On that last point, political scientist Brendan Nyhan made the crucial point: There are actually two perfectly plausible explanations. The ridiculous title could be just another sign of an administration that routinely botches basic tasks; after all, official White House communications have been plagued by typos ever since Trump took office, and just a few days ago a prankster claiming to be Senator Bob Menendez managed to get a call through to the President.