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Opinion
Trump’s tough trade tactics risk turning the world away from America
Trump’s tariff threats to bully countries into helping achieve his political goals may create a backlash like the one that propelled him to power
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Rob York is a Hawaii-based policy analyst.
US President Donald Trump’s first term changed the conversation on trade in the United States. Where the consensus had once been that open markets would eventually lead to even adversarial states like China and Russia adopting values like America’s, Trump’s first-term tariffs led to a recognition of their uses, and a deeper understanding of how adversarial states game the free-trade system.
Tariffs do indeed lead to higher costs for consumers, but had Europe and the US strategically borne that pain years ago, the former might have weaned itself off Russian oil long before the Ukraine invasion, and the latter would not be facing a strategic dependence on pharmaceuticals and critical minerals from its primary geopolitical opponent.
Just as one can be too trusting with those who might betray them, liberal defenders of the free-trade system have too often displayed an idealism that its opponents could take advantage of.
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