The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board ripped into Donald Trump’s tariff flip-flop fiasco in a blistering op-ed.
Trump immediately pulling back from his 145% tariffs on China is a complete surrender. When reality slaps you in the face, hard, sometimes even a narcissist like Trump takes heed.
Rarely has an economic policy been repudiated as soundly, and as quickly, as President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs—and by Mr. Trump’s own hand. Witness the agreement Monday morning to scale back his punitive tariffs on China—his second major retreat in less than a week. This is a win for economic reality, and for American prosperity.–As with last week’s modest British agreement, the China deal is more surrender than Trump victory.
The only people believing in Trump’s massive tariffs misfire are MAGA cult members like Peter Navarro and his entire economic cabinet.
One tragedy of Mr. Trump’s shoot-America-in-the-foot-first approach is that he’s hurt his chances of rallying a united front of countries against Beijing’s mercantilism. By targeting allies with tariffs, Mr. Trump has eroded trust in America’s economic and political reliability.–If there’s a silver lining to this turmoil, it is that markets have forced Mr. Trump to back down from his fever dream that high tariff walls will usher in a new “golden age.” The age didn’t last two months, and it was more leaden than golden. White House aide Peter Navarro, the main architect with Mr. Trump of the Liberation Day fiasco, has been repudiated.
Mr. Trump will not want to admit it, but he started a trade war with Adam Smith and lost. He’s not the first President to learn that lesson.
Trump started a trade war with the entire world over his obsession with late nineteenth-century tariffs, which have no place in today’s reality.
Demented Donald almost destroyed the entire economy of the US and still might, but at least temporarily, he had to cave and surrender.
If the Republican party in Congress acted like an actual political party instead of cult members, these tariffs would have never flown the Trump coop.
When will Trump cry like a baby about how awful and mean Rupert Murdoch’s WSJ editorial board is?
