Trump’s tariff fixation won’t help Americans

If there is any policy issue on which President Donald Trump has been consistent on, it’s trade. For years, Trump has expressed his view that American greatness and international trade are at odds with each other. Other countries, he asserts, almost inevitably take advantage of America, somehow, through the international trade process.

Consequently, as president in his first term, he launched a trade war even with American allies. He declared himself a “Tariff Man” and began slapping tariffs on imports under the mistaken belief that doing so would help American workers. Many of those tariffs were continued and expanded on under President Joe Biden.

According to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, “Before accounting for behavioral effects, the $79 billion in higher tariffs amounts to an average annual tax increase on US households of $625.” In addition, “the imposed Trump-Biden tariffs will reduce long-run GDP by 0.2 percent, the capital stock by 0.1 percent, and employment by 142,000 full-time equivalent jobs.”

Having not bothered to consider the deleterious impacts of his tariffs, Trump has instead sought to go all-in on tariffs and threats of tariffs.

He has also now taken to threatening businesses with tariffs if they don’t make their goods in the United States.

“My message to every business in the world is very simple: Come make your product in America, and we will give you among the lowest taxes of any nation on Earth,” he said at the World Economic Forum. “We’re bringing them down very substantially, even from the original Trump tax cuts.  But if you don’t make your product in America, which is your prerogative, then, very simply, you will have to pay a tariff.”

It evidently hasn’t occurred to Trump that businesses manufacture goods outside of the United States because it is cheaper, even much cheaper, to do so. What Trump is doing will only make goods pricier for American consumers and businesses in America which rely on imports.

If Trump wants to help Americans, he will focus first and foremost on deregulation, ensuring the business environment is globally competitive and dropping all this tariff nonsense. Trade has made the world, including America, richer. The sooner he realizes that, the better.