What’s Really Behind Trump’s Tariffs?

Three theories to explain the method to Trump's tariff madness

An interesting read, but I think all three of those theories are wrong. I think it's something much simpler:

Trump genuinely believes that deep economic relationships with other countries are bad.

A belief that the U.S. should be more self-sufficient, less engaged economically with other countries, is one of the few policy positions that Trump has always rigorously and forcefully maintained. He sincerely believes that we'd be better off being less a part of a global economy, and more towards an autarky:

This is about economic self-reliance.

Many types of ideological regimes emphasize a desire for self-sufficiency. North Korea has juche. Stalin had the Iron Curtain. Juan Peron had Peronism in Argentina. Franco had his autarky policy. China’s Ming Dynasty and the Tokugawa shoguns of Japan had closed-country policies. Even Xi Jinping has emphasized economic self-reliance over rapid growth.

Trump ultimately isn’t much different. His inherent suspicion of other countries makes him want to be less dependent on them. To Trump, this goal is much more important than Americans’ prosperity. It’s more important than manufacturing strength or the fate of the working class. It’s a political goal whose value to Trump can’t be measured in dollars or jobs or production numbers.

This is American juche. Our own Iron Curtain. America won the Cold War, then we looked at the country that lost and decided to be more like them.

noahpinion.blog - Trump takes a baseball bat to the

Why he believes this stuff is open to interpretation. The most plausible explanation is that Trump's entire business career has approached "deals" as if they are always zero-sum transactions: someone's a winner, and someone's a loser. There can't be a deal where both parties are winners. If the other party isn't being taken advantage of, then they're taking advantage of you. If you believe that, then you're not going to believe in Ricardian comparative advantage or the idea that international trade makes both countries stronger. That can't happen - if the other country is happy and benefiting from the trade, it must mean that you're losing, that you're being treated unfairly.

But I don't believe that he's pushing on tariffs in furtherance of some deeper policy agenda or a desire to annex Canada to emulate McKinley. He's pushing tariffs because he wants the U.S. to be more economically independent, and believes it's better for a country to be economically independent than not - even if it makes the country a little poorer.