What Trump’s team really wants out of tariffs

That is: Now, the toughest tariffs by far are on China, and they’re paired with relatively much lower (but still significant) tariffs on the rest of the world while the administration seeks trade deals with various countries in hopes of forming a trade coalition against China. Trump’s advisers hope that this policy will achieve several things at once: bring manufacturing (and manufacturing jobs) back to the US, address national security concerns about dependence on China, boost US exports, raise revenue to help address the US national debt — and maybe even pave the way toward a restructuring of the global currency system. The flipside to that is that the weaker the tariffs are and the more temporary they appear to be, the less likely they are to achieve the Trump’s team’s ambitious aims of revitalizing US manufacturing and reducing dependence on China.

Author: Andrew Prokop

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