Trump Is Already Caving on Tariffs

But that favorable response quickly reversed after Trump stated on Truth Social that the Post story “incorrectly states that my tariff policy will be pared back. That is wrong.” For good measure, Trump labelled the story, by the Post’s excellent Jeff Stein, “Fake News.” This well-worn phrase is, typically, Trump’s “tell” that a news story that irritates him is quite accurate, but the markets weren’t subtle enough to register that.

Trump campaigned on a pledge to impose across-the-board tariffs of 10 to 20 percent on all imports. Everybody except Trump, including his economic team, recognize that this would be ruinous for the economy, raising prices (Kamala Harris was quite right to call the tariff proposal a national sales tax) and provoking retaliation from the roughly 200 countries with whom the United States trades. 

Trump’s allies within the oligarchy that helped reinstall him have assumed that the president-elect is bluffing in order to obtain trade concessions (that’s the charitable view) or too brain-addled (that’s the uncharitable view) to put so foolish a plan into practice. Trump’s economic team, according to the Post’s Stein, still wants to impose tariffs globally, but “only on certain sectors deemed critical to national or economic security.” There’s no agreement yet on what those sectors might be, but discussions are underway, Stein writes, citing two anonymous sources, to impose them on “the defense industrial supply chain (through tariffs on steel, iron, aluminum and copper); critical medical supplies (syringes, needles, vials and pharmaceutical materials); and energy production (batteries, rare earth minerals and even solar panels).”