Tariffs are Trump’s favorite plaything – and his justifications are absurd | Steven Greenhouse

‘Trump is essentially telling Canada: I have a right to punch you in the nose whenever I want. But if you punch me back, that’s illegal discrimination against the US.’ Photograph: Carlos Barría/ReutersView image in fullscreen‘Trump is essentially telling Canada: I have a right to punch you in the nose whenever I want. But if you punch me back, that’s illegal discrimination against the US.’ Photograph: Carlos Barría/ReutersOpinionDonald TrumpTariffs are Trump’s favorite plaything – and his justifications are absurdSteven GreenhouseThe president is using forced labor as a pretext to slap tariffs on countries around the world

With the midterm elections less than four months away, it’s a precarious time for Donald Trump and Republicans: Trump’s war against Iran is going badly, his approval ratings are in the toilet, gas prices are soaring and pushing up inflation, and nation after nation is furious about Trump’s insults, bullying and ugly American unilateralism.

So amid all this mess, what does Trump do? He turns to his favorite economic plaything: tariffs. On Monday, Trump signed orders to slap a 50% tariff on many Canadian goods, and four days later, he imposed across-the-board 10% or 12.5% tariffs on goods from more than 80 countries. Trump was no doubt thumping his chest, while millions of people overseas were dumping on him for yet another unnecessary, hostile act.

Too bad for Republicans, and most Americans, though, because Trump’s fixation on tariffs will only worsen their troubles. Trump’s new tariffs will push up prices – let’s not forget that tariffs are taxes on imports, and US consumers will pay those taxes. A corollary of that: Trump’s tariffs will worsen Americans No 1 economic concern: affordability. In bad news for typical Americans, the Yale Budget Lab estimates that Trump’s tariffs will increase costs for the average US household by $1,100 each year. The tariffs are also likely to push Trump’s approval ratings deeper into the sewer. If Trump thinks these tariffs are going to distract Americans from thinking about the Epstein files or the disastrous mess he’s made with his Iran “excursion”, he’s deluding himself. The American people aren’t going to forget those things.

It’s hard to tell whether Trump’s repeated use of tariffs is a fixation or an addiction. Emperor Donald I evidently loves tariffs because he can use them to clobber other countries whenever he wants. They’re a powerful cudgel he won’t let go of. Trump imposed his new tariffs on more than 80 countries on the very day that another set of tariffs he slapped on dozens of countries was due to expire. To paraphrase the actor Charlton Heston, I can imagine Trump saying: “I’ll give up tariffs when you take them from my cold, dead hands.”

With these new tariffs, Trump is again engaged in his delusional, destructive tariff tomfoolery. They’ll push up prices, squeeze Americans’ wallets and anger other countries. Trump said his tariffs would boost US manufacturing, but the US has lost 75,000 factory jobs since he returned to office, with many executives complaining about all the herky-jerky uncertainty Trump has wrought. Assessing Trump’s effects on the economy, Atsi Sheth, the chief credit officer for Moody’s Ratings, told the New York Times :“Volatility and unpredictability is the new normal.”

Like so much that Trump does, his new tariffs are clearly based on pique and false premises with lots of shamelessness and absurdity thrown in. After the US supreme court overturned Trump’s me-against-the-whole-world tariffs in February, Trump, refusing to let go of his tariff toy, turned to other strategies. To justify his new 50% tariffs against Canada – which are piled atop numerous other tariffs he’s imposed on a country that was long the US’s closest ally – Trump relied on a never before used provision of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, a widely derided 1930 law that greatly worsened the Great Depression of a century ago. With this new tariff, placed on hockey sticks, paper, plywood, dairy products and many other Canadian goods, Trump invoked a Smoot-Hawley provision that allows retaliation against countries that engage in trade discrimination against the US.

In making that case, Trump’s exhibit No 1 is something rather preposterous, or should I say rather shameless? After Trump imposed high, punitive tariffs on Canada last year, 11 of Canada’s 13 provinces and territories halted liquor imports from the US because they were so irate about those tariffs along with Trump’s outlandish and belittling statements that he wanted to make Canada the 51st state. The White House called this ban on US liquor illegal discrimination, while Canadians view it as a type of traditional trade retaliation that countries engage in when another country – here the US – slaps tariffs on them, a situation made worse by the fact that Trump’s tariffs against Canada are an egregious violation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

Trump also insists that Canada has improperly discriminated against the US because Canada imposed a 25% tariff on select US-made cars after Trump slapped a 25% tariff on Canadian-made cars.

He is essentially telling Canada: I have a right to punch you in the nose whenever I want. But if you punch me back, that’s illegal discrimination against the US. That’s the logic of America’s leading stable genius, who also offered another far-fetched justification for his decision: “We’re going to put a big tariff on Canada because of the smoke,” he told reporters on Friday, referring to wildfire smoke that has crossed the US border.

Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford, isn’t happy about Trump’s painful, new 50% tariff. “We won’t back down,” he said on social media. “The fastest and only way to get US alcohol back on Ontario shelves is for the U.S. to drop its illegal tariffs on Canada.”

As for the new tariffs hitting more than 80 countries, Trump, who over the years has shown next to no concern about worker exploitation, turned rather surprisingly to the issue of forced labor to slap on those tariffs.