Trump’s Ignorant Trade War: New at Reason

Veronique de Rugy takes on Trump’s trade war in her latest column for Reason:

“We’re putting the trade war on hold,” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin announced on Sunday. “It’s about structural changes. It’s about lowering tariffs. China has committed to lower tariffs on many things and made structural changes to protect our technology.”

Alas, that didn’t settle the issue. Several hours later, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer reaffirmed his belief that tariffs remained an important tool to “protect our technology.” Finally, on Wednesday, the president tweeted that “Our Trade Deal with China is moving along nicely, but in the end we will probably have to use a different structure in that this will be too hard to get done and to verify results after completion.”

I am not sure what Trump means by “a different structure.” Nor am I sure what a new framework would require. And I’m certainly not sure there’s any upside to trying to make sense of all these conflicting statements.

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