Trump's move-fast-and-break-things tariff strategy collides with reality

Politico

2 days ago

President Donald Trump's move-fast-and-break-things ethos this week led to a major setback for his trade policy, leaving the White House scrambling to chart its way around a potentially devastating legal ruling.
Yet with the central element of his economic agenda in jeopardy, Trump is digging in on his vow to impose steep tariffs by any means necessary — and stick it to those who question his strength and think he's bound to 'chicken out.' He and administration officials have said that negotiations with other countries will continue, are insisting they'll win their current tariff battle in court and are even preparing back-up strategies for new tariffs in case they don't.
Trump's determination to move fast could slow implementation of his tariff regime. It also threatens to cost him credibility with businesses he's counting on to invest in the U.S. and world leaders whose buy-in he needs to negotiate trade deals.
Still, few expect a different posture from a famously intransigent president or any second-guessing following the Wednesday ruling from the U.S. Court of International Trade, which briefly halted most of the tariffs.
'I don't think that's going to stop, in any way, the administration. The president's going to try to assert his tariff authority under any avenue possible,' said Marc Short, who served as Trump's legislative affairs director and Vice President Mike Pence's chief of staff during the president's first term. 'The president is not one to accept defeat. He certainly didn't in 2020. It's not like because he had a bad court ruling he's going to turn his back on this.'
Trump and his top lieutenants see the speed with which he is moving to enact not just trade policy but his entire agenda as a feature, not a bug. Trade adviser Peter Navarro, who has been with Trump since his first term, often refers to the pace as 'Trump time,' and other senior White House staff members frequently chalk up any inconsistency or volatility in the president's policymaking approach to his dealmaking acumen.
'We have to act fast,' Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday afternoon. 'We have to be fast and nimble.'
And Trump may be especially keen on refuting the notion that he is weak after the moniker TACO, or 'Trump Always Chickens Out,' caught on among Wall Street traders, said one Trump ally outside the White House, granted anonymity to speak candidly.
'I don't think Trump can back down now, mainly because of this TACO theme,' the person said. 'He's clearly super irritated by it and it's like a challenge to his very manhood now.'
European leaders have continued to chafe at the U.S.'s erratic approach to trade, a preview of what Trump might face at the G7 summit next month in Canada as he arrives with a slightly less-firm negotiating position.
Still, the president has shown no inkling that he plans to back away from tariffs, which he's often called the 'most beautiful word' in the English language.
Inside the West Wing, aides downplayed the legal whiplash as a minor stumbling block rather than a major threat to a trade policy seen as increasingly central to the president's economic legacy. And while they bristled at the TACO-centric talk, there was no expectation that Trump would veer off his maximalist trade push.
'He's been consistent on tariffs and trade since the 1980s,' said a White House official, granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. 'He's not firm on this because somebody made a taco meme and it's going viral.'
Administration officials are readying backup plans should the broad set of levies they have placed on U.S. trading partners be again put on hold in court, which trade attorneys and others around the administration expect when an appeals court revisits the matter in June.
Among them is a mechanism that would allow it to quickly impose tariffs without congressional approval or a more burdensome evidence-gathering and review process, according to two people familiar with discussions about the administration's trade strategy, granted anonymity to discuss it.That strategy, one of several under consideration, would allow the president to replace existing 10 percent across-the-board tariffs on countries with levies of up to 15 percent, but only for six months. After that, Trump would need Congress' approval to extend them.
'It's important to understand that the president's trade team has been thinking about these legal tools for years, right? We have a lot of folks on TV and the internet who've been thinking about it for about six minutes,' said U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer during an interview on CNBC Friday morning. 'So, of course, these are things that we've been considering and talking about for a very long time. All these things are on the table.'
But so-called Section 122 tariffs — named for the part of the Trade Act that outlines them — have never been tested in court, meaning the administration could find itself stymied once again. In order to move quickly to enact the so-called Liberation Day tariffs, the White House leaned on emergency powers in a federal law known as IEEPA, an approach that a federal court on Wednesday said exceeded his legal authority.
'Whether you move forward under IEEPA or a different authority, the president has made clear that tariffs are a central plank of his economic agenda and he is going to use the leverage the tariffs create to drive better outcomes for the U.S.,' said Everett Eissenstat, who served as deputy director of the National Economic Council and a key trade adviser in Trump's first term. 'Whether this tool is the tool or there's another tool, tariff authority, he's going to move forward.'
But even Trump allies fear that those in the White House aren't doing enough to counsel the president on his best options, leaning into his desire to move quickly without presenting him with a full suite of more durable strategies.
'Whether you're for tariffs or not, it's pretty clear the president doesn't have unilateral authority to raise taxes,' said Stephen Moore, an outside economic adviser to Trump who has long been skeptical of the administration's go-it-alone trade approach. 'It's pretty clear that at some point Congress is going to have to vote on tariff policy.'
As advisers mulled strategies to see their way through the thicket of looming legal challenges, Trump sought to demonstrate resolve.
After a long social media post on Thursday night blasting the International Court of Trade and a ruling that he said 'would completely destroy Presidential Power,' Trump continued posting on Friday morning with a broadside aimed at Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Claiming that his drastic reduction of the 145 percent tariffs against Beijing was a matter of saving China from 'grave economic danger,' Trump asserted that it 'HAS TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US.' Greer attributed the president's frustration to the Chinese 'slow-rolling their compliance' with the agreement hashed out earlier this month.
And in perhaps the clearest sign of the president's defensiveness in the face of Wall Street criticism, Trump opened a long, freewheeling Oval Office press conference on Friday afternoon by directing an aide to position an iPad on the Resolute Desk from which he played a clip of CNBC's Rick Santelli — whose 2009 rant gave birth to the Tea Party movement — praising his economic record.
As the clip played, Trump raised his eyebrows and nodded at the journalists and aides positioned in front of him.
'Not bad, right?' Trump said when the clip finished playing, as departing adviser Elon Musk implored people in the room to applaud.