Opinion - Why exactly is Trump so obsessed with tariffs?

Yahoo

02-04-2025

They're calling it 'Liberation Day.' But unless your idea of freedom involves paying more for everything from cars to cocktails, you might want to hold the champagne. Because today, President Trump is celebrating his latest economic brainchild: new tariffs on most imported goods.
Now, I know Trump's not big on reading, or history, or, you know, 'thinking.' But this isn't some innovative new radical idea he just cooked up at Mar-a-Lago. No, serious people (see Sen. Reed Smoot and Rep. Willis C. Hawley in 1930) have tried this before.
And guess what? It doesn't work. It's the economic equivalent of trying to cure a headache with a hammer.
The sainted Ronald Reagan warned against this strategy. And Trump himself acknowledges it might cause a 'disturbance' and says he 'couldn't care less' if car prices increase. Which, on one hand, is refreshingly honest. On the other hand, it's a little unsettling to hear this from a guy whose 2024 campaign sales pitch hinged on lowering prices.
So why is he doing this? Well, let's start with the kindest explanation — one that assumes he is neither scheming nor lying, just genuinely misguided and mistaken.
Maybe, just maybe, Trump truly believes tariffs are an unmitigated good. He's certainly been talking about them for decades, in that way certain old men get fixated on ideas that were debunked long before they were born. He sees the world as a rigged, zero-sum game, where America (and more importantly, Trump) is always getting fleeced. The only solution is to hit back — hard, indiscriminately and preferably with something that fits on a bumper sticker.
If you buy into Trump's victimhood logic — and you shouldn't — then maybe you believe there will be some initial suffering, some 'pain' before the 'gain,' as one of his minions put it.
And then what? Factories magically reappear in Ohio? American manufacturing rises from the dead like some sort of blue-collar phoenix? American kids can suddenly climb the rope in gym class and perform five pull ups?
Never mind that companies spent decades building a global supply chain because it was cheaper and more efficient (see David Ricardo's law of comparative advantage, circa 1817). Never mind that even if you could unwind that elaborate system, it would take decades — longer than Trump will be alive, and certainly longer than he plans to pay attention.
And in the meantime, American consumers, who are already gasping from inflation, get smacked with higher prices.
Now, if Trump actually cared about national security — and that's a big 'if' — there might be a plausible argument to be made here. Maybe the idea is to make America less dependent on foreign supply chains, especially from countries like China (and not, say, Canada). Remember when we couldn't get enough masks during COVID? That was fun.
But if that's the goal, wouldn't a competent leader go on TV, look the country in the eye and say, 'Listen, folks. This is going to hurt in the short term, but here's why your sacrifice matters'?
Instead, all we get are vague platitudes, the usual 'tough talk,' and press flacks and right-wing talking heads constantly assuring us that 'the president has been very clear.'
Spoiler: He hasn't. He never is. His entire communication strategy is to blurt out something inflammatory and let everyone else scramble to impose meaning on it (which he will then contradict).
Which brings us to the less-generous interpretations. Maybe this isn't about fixing the economy at all. Maybe it's about power: the raw, transactional, kingmaker kind. The ability to impose tariffs at will lets Trump dictate winners and losers, punish or reward entire industries and nations, shake down CEOs and generally feel like the most important man in the room.
Or maybe it's about money. Not for you, of course. For the billionaires. The ones who see economic crises as buying opportunities. The ones who made a killing off the 2008 crash and the COVID crisis. When everything is burning, they swoop in and pick through the wreckage for bargains. And wouldn't it be extremely convenient to know exactly when that wreckage was coming?
So here we are. The best-case scenario is that Trump is utterly misguided. The worst-case scenario is that it's all a con job. And the most likely scenario? Some combination of the two.
Either way, the result is the same: You pay more, he gets more power and nothing actually gets better.
In other words, just another day in the Trump administration.
Matt K. Lewis is a columnist, podcaster and author of the books 'Too Dumb to Fail' and 'Filthy Rich Politicians.'
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