Trump’s trade tariffs will weaken America
The Trump administration announced that steel and aluminum imports from the EU, Canada and Mexico posed a national security risk to the U.S. Having assessed trade with our closest allies to be a grave threat to America, Trump imposed a 25 percent tax on steel and a 10 percent tax on aluminum imported from them.
Those tariffs are more than bad trade policy. They are a front on Trump’s war against the liberal international order and its values.
Trump repeatedly violates the rules and taboos of the liberal international system because he is indifferent to the principles they advance. His lens of winners versus losers and haters sees absolute gain as relative decline.
If clean air, free trade, freedom of choice and human rights benefit the world as a whole, how is America winning?