Americans Will Pay for Trump's Pointless Trade War

Like Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaigns, his trade war is aimed at bludgeoning other countries into submission, and like those other campaigns it will end in failure.

Trump launched his pointless trade war over the weekend. Canada and Mexico are predictably retaliating against the unwarranted tariff hike, and China is preparing its own response:

Mexico and Canada, the top two U.S. trading partners, immediately vowed retaliatory tariffs, while China said it would challenge Trump's move at the World Trade Organization and take other "countermeasures."

The president is addicted to economic warfare, and he wrongly believes that he can use this coercion to extract huge concessions from the targeted countries. The heavy-handed, extreme measures that he has taken would make it harder to get other governments to make concessions in any case, but the bigger problem is that Trump’s demands are so unrealistic that there is no way for the targeted states to comply even if they were willing to do so. Like Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaigns, his trade war is aimed at bludgeoning other countries into submission, and like those other campaigns it will end in failure.

Attacking major trading partners because they cannot magically solve migration and drug trafficking problems is insane. Trump expects the targeted countries to do the impossible and severely punishes them when they can’t. He might as well demand that they spin straw into gold.

Americans will be paying the price for Trump’s pointless trade war in more ways than one. The tariff hikes and the other countries’ retaliatory measures will jack up prices for all kinds of goods, our neighbors will likely be thrown into recession (and we will probably follow them), and the stock market will drop sharply. Beyond the direct economic costs, Trump has attacked our closest trading partners for no good reason. That will harm U.S. interests now and in the future. Other countries will be looking to reduce their exposure to the U.S. in case Trump turns his gaze towards them.

None of this is necessary. Americans and our neighbors are going to be made to pay a steep price in exchange for nothing. If anything, our neighbors will become less cooperative with the U.S. on important issues rather than more. After all, why should they reward the U.S. for its irrational aggression? At best, the U.S. might obtain a little bit more assistance that it could have received without launching a trade war. It is more likely that the economic dislocation created by this trade war will increase migration into the U.S., and of course it will do nothing to stem the flow of drugs into this country.

Trump’s new trade war is more proof that he will follow through on even his most absurd and destructive threats. Just because a policy is incredibly stupid and self-defeating doesn’t mean that he won’t do it. He is already following through on some of his most reckless and foolish threats in the first month, and we have to assume that he will follow through on more of them in the months to come.

Economic wars can be very destructive and they can sometimes do even more harm to a country than armed conflict. No one ever really wins in an economic war. The only question is how much damage is done to all parties before the instigator of the conflict decides to relent. All sides emerge from an economic war poorer than they would have been otherwise. Any leader who plunges his country into an economic war when there is no cause for it is a dangerous buffoon.

Trump says that it will be “worth the price.” All that means is that he is willing to sacrifice Americans’ prosperity for the sake of his grandstanding stupidity. The president and his supporters hijacked the phrase America First years ago, but as this trade war makes clear these people are actively hostile to the well-being and interests of the American people. They are happy to wreck the country and leave its people far worse off while they pretend that they are master strategists. Self-proclaimed nationalists really are some of the worst caretakers of the national interest.