Don’t Go Searching for Strategy in Trump’s Tariffs
His nascent trade war with China is a reminder that some things for the president are always personal.
“China has total respect for Donald Trump and for Donald Trump's very, very large brain."
Photographer: Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images
As China and the U.S. dig in for what may become a protracted and possibly very painful trade war, a lot of time is being wasted trying to divine whether President Donald Trump has a strategy.
If we’re defining “strategy” as a cohesive, premeditated plan designed with clear goals in mind — goals that go beyond “gotcha!” — then no, the president doesn’t. “I’m going to teach China a lesson” isn’t a strategy. Slapping rounds of tariffs on Chinese imports is punitive, of course, and may ultimately convince the country’s leaders to open their markets and stop stealing intellectual property from the U.S. It’s unlikely to convince them to significantly reshape what has thus far proven to be a wildly successful, government-brokered industrial policy that has turned China into an economic powerhouse.