Source: The American Prospect
by David Dayen
“I’m aware of the innumeracy of the Trump administration, apparently using a shortcut AI formula to reset global trade imbalances and trying to bullshit their way through the criticism. But I think we give too much credit to Donald Trump and his lieutenants when we suggest that they’re pursuing a misguided trade policy, or that they aren’t pairing tariffs with the necessary steps to boost domestic manufacturing. Those things are true, of course: U.S. trade policy has been deeply inequitable for decades, favoring multinationals over workers and the environment, giving benefits to those corporations in free-trade agreements that they could never get through normal legislative channels, and handing over economic decisions to Wall Street. But these careful explanations, however correct, have nothing to do with what we saw on display in the Rose Garden yesterday. Because these aren’t really tariffs at all.” (04/03/25)
https://prospect.org/economy/2025-04-03-theyre-not-tariffs-theyre-sanctions/