Source: The Atlantic
by Scott Lincicome
“Perhaps the most levelheaded defense of Donald Trump’s misguided plan for steep global tariffs is that they’ll never be imposed. Trump surrogates have lately been assuring the business world that the former president will, if elected, use merely the threat of across-the-board import taxes of 10 to 20 percent to pressure other countries to lower their own barriers to American goods. The result: freer trade among participating nations, and more revenue for American companies, without ever firing anything more than a warning shot. … The ‘just a threat’ strategy sounds nice in the abstract but in reality suffers from fatal flaws: It ignores not only America’s checkered history of such gambits but also the economic damage that threats alone can inflict on the American and global economies.” (10/28/24)