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What I Don’t Understand About Trump’s Tariff Strategy
How does he define “success” here?
When President Donald Trump inherited the U.S. economy, it was very strong. Unemployment was near record lows, the stock market was near record highs (even before the 2024 election), and U.S. GDP and real wage growth were steadily climbing, with inflation steadily decreasing.
Trump had campaigned on tariffs during his 2024 campaign. So the fact that he is using them isn’t what’s surprising — it’s the intensity and scale of his tariffs. While most market participants and American trade partners likely didn’t take Trump 100% literally about his tariff threats, even those who thought he was serious probably didn’t anticipate this degree of intensity and scale.
In just a few days, Donald Trump’s tariffs have sent global markets into freefall, with some of the worst volatility since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020. I get that this is supposedly part of some grand strategy to use tariffs, tax cuts, and the re-onshoring of manufacturing jobs to create a new “golden age” for America. But there is one major part of this plan that I don’t understand. Aside from the basic presumption that Trump actually knows what he’s doing and isn’t just operating on political instinct instead of deep policy planning (I’m betting it’s all instinct).
