President Trump is having a grand time playing chicken with the U.S. economy, risking our prosperity to force other countries to submit to his protectionist diktats. It’s put him right where he wants to be — at the center of world attention.
But his vendetta against trade is alarming U.S. consumers, businesses and investors, and reawakening public doubts that he knows what he’s doing.
Most Americans don’t see the point in picking fights with friendly trade partners like Canada. Private sector leaders are aghast at Trump’s on-again, off-again threats to impose suffocating “reciprocal” duties on all imported goods.
While pausing those tariffs to stop the U.S. bond market from melting down, Trump has imposed an equally arbitrary 10 percent tariff on most of our trading partners. He’s also gone nuclear on China, raising tariffs to an absurd 245 percent and goading Beijing into levying massive retaliatory duties on U.S. exports.
