Trump's Tariffs Look Like a Self-Inflicted Wound
There's a right way — and a wrong way — to help.
Photographer: Ty Wright/Bloomberg“Trade wars,” President Donald Trump recently declared on Twitter, “are good, and easy to win.” But it’s questionable whether the president’s proposed tariffs -- a tax of 25 percent on imported steel and 10 percent on imported aluminum -- will be a war or an act of friendly fire.
As I recently wrote, tariffs are generally not a good way to promote domestic industry. They encourage American producers to hunker down behind the tax’s protective wall, focusing on the captive local market instead of figuring out how to prevail in the rough-and-tumble of global competition. Forcing American consumers to use the domestic-made product might eventually result in American steel and aluminum becoming bywords for low quality.