What is Trump trying to accomplish with his tariffs?
It is often unclear what the president’s endgame is, which adds to the uncertainty surrounding his trade wars. He has given different reasons for his sweeping import taxes, and sometimes they contradict each other.
Trump has said that tariffs can raise money for the U.S. Treasury, protect U.S. industries, draw factories to the United States and serve as a negotiating tactic to get other countries to bend to his will, whether it means getting them to reduce their own tariffs or to crack down on the illegal flow of drugs and immigrants into the United States.
But if tariffs mean Americans buy fewer imports or if companies relocate factories to the United States, then revenue from tariffs will fall, undercutting his plan to use them as a money generating alternative to the income tax.
Trump and his own aides have also offered competing explanations for the sweeping “reciprocal’’ tariffs he announced Wednesday.
The president on Thursday said the levies “give us great power to negotiate’’ and were coaxing other countries into offering to lower their own trade barriers. “Every country is calling us,” Trump said. “That’s the beauty of what we do. We put ourselves in the driver’s seat.’’
The same day, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro told CNBC that the tariffs were meant to stay: The idea is to get companies to produce goods in America, not abroad, bringing down longstanding U.S. trade deficits. “Let me make this very clear,” he said. “This is not a negotiation. This is not that. This is a national emergency.’’
