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After weeks of nervous anticipation in the #financial #markets & in the capitals of America’s #trading partners, #Trump’s “Liberation Day” #tariffs have arrived, &, even by his standards, they are shockingly high & wide-ranging. “For decades our country has been looted, pillaged, raped, & plundered by nations near & far,” Trump said on Wed to a crowd at the WH that included members of #UAW, & also elected #Republicans.

After delivering a potted #economic history of the country in which he bizarrely claimed that the #GreatDepression would have been avoided if high tariffs had been in place, #Trump announced that “reciprocal tariffs” would go into effect on April 9th, w/rates of 34% on goods imported from #China, 24% on #Japan, & 20% on the #EU. Some of the highest rates were reserved for export-led developing countries in #Asia: 46% on #Vietnam, 48% on #Laos, & 49% on #Cambodia.
#economy #recession #geopolitics

…The levies #Trump announced on Wed are separate from the ones he has already imposed on #steel, #aluminum, & foreign-made #cars & parts. Taken as a whole, his tariffs represent a dramatic expansion from the more narrowly targeted duties he imposed in his first term—some of which the Biden Admin retained—& a final nail in the coffin for the open #trading environment that reigned before 2016.

Some accounts of #Trump’s approach to #trade, …identify William McKinley, 25th POTUS, as inspiration. Others suggest that #Hitler’s Germany, which pursued an economic policy of self-sufficiency, or #autarky, may be Trump’s real role model. Wherever he got his love of #tariffs & #protectionism, the intellectual antecedents of his approach go back to English mercantilist thinkers of the 16th & 17th centuries, who also viewed trade as a zero-sum enterprise in which one side wins & the other loses.

…At a time when #trade was largely financed in gold & silver, the mercantilists thought of it in terms of accumulating #wealth, or “#treasure.” #Trump thinks in terms of dollars rather than gold, but little rests on that distinction. In his remarks on Wed, he repeated his unfounded claim that #Canada was *subsidizing* the #US to the tune of $200B a year. (Trade payments aren’t subsidies, & last year the US deficit in trade on goods & services w/Canada was well under a $100B.)