With the stroke of a pen this week, Failure-in-Chief Donald Trump imposed massive tariffs on Canada, China, and Mexico that have already begun raising the price of goods ranging from automobiles and avocadoes to clothing and gasoline.
This trade war and the disastrous economic impact it’s likely to have on the U.S. economy belongs to Trump, and, according to the Wall Street Journal, will likely go down as the “dumbest trade war in history.”
According to the Journal’s editorial board, “Leaving China aside, Mr. Trump’s justification for this economic assault on the neighbors makes no sense. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt says they’ve ‘enabled illegal drugs to pour into America’ But drugs have flowed into the U.S. for decades, and will continue to do so as long as Americans keep using them. Neither country can stop it.”
“Drugs may be an excuse since Mr. Trump has made clear he likes tariffs for their own sake. ‘We don’t need the products that they have,’ Mr. Trump said on Thursday. ‘We have all the oil you need. We have all the trees you need, meaning the lumber.'”
“Mr. Trump sometimes sounds as if the U.S. shouldn’t import anything at all, that America can be a perfectly closed economy making everything at home. This is called autarky, and it isn’t the world we live in, or one that we should want to live in, as Mr. Trump may soon find out.”
Among those most likely to be hurt economically in the United States thanks to Trump’s trade war are the auto industry and American farmers, the Journal warns.
“Then there’s the prospect of retaliation, which Canada and Mexico have shown they know how to do for maximum political impact. In 2009 the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats ended a pilot program that allowed Mexican long-haul truckers into the U.S. as stipulated in Nafta. Mexico responded with targeted retaliation on 90 U.S. goods to pressure industries in key Congressional districts.”
“These included California grapes and wine, Oregon Christmas trees and cherries, jams and jellies from Ohio and North Dakota soy. When Mr. Trump imposed steel and aluminum tariffs in 2018, Mexico got results using the same tactic, putting tariffs on steel, pork products, fresh cheese and bourbon.”
All of this was avoidable, the Journal’s editors note, and it suggests Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing.
“None of this is supposed to happen under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement that Mr. Trump negotiated and signed in his first term. The U.S. willingness to ignore its treaty obligations, even with friends, won’t make other countries eager to do deals. Maybe Mr. Trump will claim victory and pull back if he wins some token concessions. But if a North American trade war persists, it will qualify as one of the dumbest in history.”
Of course, Donald Trump has never been known as smart or even moderately intelligent. And his stupidity could well wreck the American economy while also driving our allies further away from us. How exactly does that “make America great again?”
