Since taking office, Donald Trump has made good on few of the promises he made to his supporters on the campaign trail. Obamacare? It’s still alive and kicking. Tax reform? Despite presenting a series of bullet points in April and inventing a bill out of thin air earlier this month, his top economic adviser says Congress won’t see anything of actual substance until at least September. The wall? Considering no one wants it and even fewer people want to pay for it, it’ll probably get built around the time Trump allows his natural hair color to see the light of day. The $1 trillion infrastructure plan? At press time, it amounted to a call to privatize air traffic control and a vaporware proposal to accelerate permitting. Save American jobs from layoffs and outsourcing? Ask employees at the three companies he singled out for P.R. stunts, who subsequently announced layoffs and outsourcing, how that’s working out. As perhaps the thinnest-skinned president in the history of the United States, the notion that Trump is not as successful as he thinks he is has clearly gotten to him. So, as we head into the holiday weekend, he’s apparently got a plan for making a splash: he’s going to start a trade war.
Or, at least he’s thinking about it. Against the advice of members of his Cabinet, Axios reports that in a meeting on Monday, Trump and his more nationalist-minded advisers “made it clear that they’re hell-bent on imposing tariffs —potentially in the 20% range — on steel, and likely other imports.” According to Mike Allen and Jonathan Swan, the tariffs could eventually apply to other imports, including “aluminum, semiconductors, paper, and appliances like washing machines.” Amazingly, virtually everyone in the room was apparently opposed to the plan, with one official claiming 22 people were against it and three were in favor, but since Trump’s vote counts 100 times, here we are. While the plan, pushed by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross (and, of course, Steve “Blunt Instrument” Bannon), would target China and other major exporters of steel, and punishing China was one of Trump’s major campaign talking points, top officials reportedly “argued strenuously that the move is ill-advised [because] the trade war wouldn’t just affect China. The collateral damage would include a slew of allies, including Canada, Mexico, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom.” Still, per Allen and Swan, “everyone left the room believing the country is headed toward a major trade confrontation.”
Of course, Trump has made bold, ill-advised claims before that never panned out, like when he vowed to rip up NAFTA, i.e., the “worst trade deal in the history of the world,” but changed his mind after having a friendly chat with Justin Trudeau. On the other hand, lately he’s seemed particularly invested in actively harming the U.S.’s relationships with its allies, so perhaps this time he’ll follow through.
