Trump’s Insane Tariff Policy
The last excuse that diehard defenders of President Trump’s tariff policies have advanced now lies in ruins. Trump had put in place exorbitant tariffs, these defenders acknowledged, but this was just a negotiating tactic, to get the targeted countries to lower their own tariffs on American goods. But if that is his aim, he is pursuing it in a blunderbuss fashion. As Paul Craig Roberts, a strong defender of tariffs, says: “Trump’s position on tariffs is problematical for many reasons. First, let me say that historically tariffs were a legislative issue. The Morrill Tariff was voted by Congress. The Smith-Hawley Tariff was voted by Congress. How is it that the executive is imposing tariffs? Assuming the president has this authority and assuming that we don’t have tariffs on others but others have tariffs on the US, the way to success is for Trump to sit down with the offenders and explain that the situation is not working for us. How do they propose to rectify the inequality? This would have given Trump the upper hand. Instead, he is portrayed as issuing threats not only to China but also to American allies. Retaliation has become the game.”
Ron Unz, who is a master of statistical analysis. offers the best account of where Trump has gone wrong. Unz, like Roberts, isn’t opposed to protective tariffs, but he explains fully Trump’s irrationality. Trump has confused trade deficits with tariffs, leading him to absurd figures: “For example, our factually-challenged president declared that his new tariff rates were ‘retaliatory’ and indeed the first column of the chart he displayed showed the foreign tariffs that had allegedly provoked his retaliation, but everyone quickly noticed that these figures were total nonsense. Switzerland hardly imposes a 61% tariff on American goods, nor does Vietnam maintain a 90% tariff rate against our products. Instead these figures were merely calculated using a formula based upon America’s existing trade deficit in goods, which was something entirely different. So if another country sold us more goods than they themselves bought, that was described as due to a tariff even if no such tariff actually existed. In a perfect example of this absurdity, Trump inc
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LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
