Comment by KaiserPro
15 days ago
You're giving him too much credit.
Trump has always liked tariffs [alas, I can't find the source for this pre-presidency, its been blown out by current events]. He thinks trade is a zero sum game, and thinks that someone else set up the petro-dollar system.
Trump has consistently and reiliably always cowered away from war. Using other means to stop it (see russia, NK, China, Iran). Yes I hear the "we're going to invade x, y and z" but they never acutally came to anything (is that because of his advisors?)
Trump doesn't think about future capacity, only future pride. Does this change "make american stronger, and other weaker" is pretty much the only calculus that he's doing.
Trump's thinking is roughly as following:
"Why do we have taxes when we can use tariffs to raise cash and bring power back?"
"Why don't they buy from us?"(china/rest of asia)
"why are we spending money on them, when we don't get any money back? They are weak."(NATO)
"Why are we punishing russia, they are offering deals" (Putin offering cash deals)
There is no 4d chess. Its just a man who's pretty far gone, shitting out edicts to idiots willing to implement them.
> Trump has always liked tariffs [alas, I can't find the source for this pre-presidency, its been blown out by current events].
Here you go, Feb 2011: https://money.cnn.com/2011/02/10/news/economy/donald_trump_c...
"The comment repeated past statements from "The Apprentice" star, who has said he wants to put a 25% tariff on all Chinese imports, to level trade imbalances in the global economy."
thank you for this link, it is most appreciated.
> [alas, I can't find the source for this pre-presidency, its been blown out by current events].
Doesn't help that Google's custom time range search is complete garbage. Searched for "trump tariffs" from 1/1/1980 to 1/1/2010 and almost every link is about the current tariffs but with timestamps between 1980 and 2010.
e.g. "20 Nov 1987 — President Donald Trump issued a slew of tariffs on Chinese goods", "30 Jun 1981 — Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced Monday a 25% increase on electricity exports to some American states as a result of President Donald Trump's tariffs", "31 Dec 1999 — IMF says too early for precise analysis on Trump tariff impact", "1 Feb 2001 — Trump's Global Tariff War Begins"
Did find a couple of links that were chronologically correct - a 1999 Guardian story about Trump wanting to tax the rich(!) and a 1987 NYT story about Reagan putting tariffs on Japan.
(duckduckgo was even worse)
Excellent research, many thanks!
Trump's tariff mania goes back decades. There was an article about it in The Times a couple of days ago. Sadly, it's paywalled.
https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/why-trump-tar...
https://archive.ph/ugF8W