By conventional thinking, Donald Trump’s tariff strategy is a failure: he sidestepped Congress, chose a dubious legal rationale to do it, and now the tariffs have been struck down by the Supreme Court, putting his entire trade agenda at risk. But that’s only one way to look at it.
Looked at another way, Trump’s tariffs were a bold and creative way to kick-start his agenda in an ongoing era of congressional gridlock. Because of the arcane workings of the US legal system, it has taken an entire year for the Supreme Court to get around to striking them down. In that year, as they wound through court after appeal after oral argument, the tariffs have been in place, and they have been arguably one of the most transformational policies of Trump’s entire presidency.
To be clear, they have not been transformational in anything approaching the way that Trump actually intended them to be. The tariffs have not revived US manufacturing; in fact, all evidence suggests they have been the latest major blow to that ailing sector, which has shed thousands of jobs every month for nearly the entire past year.
Likewise, they may have reshaped the global economic order, but not in ways that have benefited the United States. Outrage over the tariffs — their confusing and arbitrary nature, their indiscriminate punishment of both allies and foes, their use as a tool of political meddling, and their igniting of a trade war with China that Trump had to swiftly and embarrassingly back down from — has, in no particular order: weakened US global standing and pushed key security partners away; hastened efforts at de-dollarization; frayed the global alliances that have helped underwrite US power; and generally made leading rival China look like a more reliable and attractive bet than the United States to much of the world.
Why, then, would progressive elected officials ever emulate what Trump has done here, given how counterproductive it has been to both his domestic agenda and…
Auteur: Branko Marcetic
