Tag: reciprocity

Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter

“Tariff Man” Trump continues to tear up the trading system while also making imperial demands for territorial expansion. To just about everyone’s surprise, his grand colonial scheme to “make America great again” now includes making Canada the 51st state – and using the threat of punitive tariffs to get what he wants.

Some, like the Washington Post‘s Max Boot, have been making the case that Trump’s coercive use of tariffs to obtain concessions “unrelated to trade” is “novel.”

But though Trump often cites 19th-century pro-tariff President William McKinley as his inspiration, Trump is using tariffs quite differently from the way that most other U.S. presidents — or other world leaders — have used them. Typically, tariffs are enacted either to raise revenue or to protect domestic industries from foreign competition. Trump, by contrast, is using tariffs as a coercive instrument of statecraft to achieve aims that are unrelated to trade.

Boot’s piece raises good points of comparison, including parallels with Chinese economic coercion today. And I agree that the results of Trump’s tariffs will likely be a net negative for the United States.

But I disagree that Trump’s coercive use of tariffs is new; rather, it’s straight out of the GOP’s old protectionist playbook.

Continue reading “No, Trump’s Coercive Use of Tariffs Isn’t New” →