Jonathan Chait (The Atlantic), Trump Has Already Botched His Own Bad Tariff Plan: Once you’ve said you might negotiate, nobody is going to believe you when you change your mmind and say you’ll never negotiate.
To summarize: Trump has two alternative strategies. One is to “reshore” American manufacturing. But that would require, at a minimum, that investors believe that the draconian tariffs are going to last a long time. The other is to negotiate country-by-country deals resulting in more favorable terms for American exporters.
Each strategy is highly problematic in its own right.
But, in addition, the two strategies are mutually inconsistent.
Bottom line: Confusion worse confounded. Idiocy cubed.
Wall Street Journal, China Wanted to Negotiate With Trump. Now It’s Arming for Another Trade War.
The Journal knows a lot of the senior people in China. And it knows even more of the people who know the senior people in China. Long article. Deeply reported.
Bottom line (for me): China expected negotiations, beginning with Trump’s inauguration. China wanted negotiations. China got stiff-armed by the Trump Administration. Xi had no real option but the retaliate. The standoff with China is going to last a long time.
Politico Magazine, Why Trump May Get Away With His Tariff Trauma: Other countries encounter the ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ as they weigh how to respond.
Helpful article. Poor headline. Poor, because the actual topic of the article is why a lot of countries are not immediately retaliating, but are instead about reaching out to Trump to try to negotiate.
There’s no paywall at Politico, so read it for yourself. My own take, for what it’s worth: Yeah, I get the “prisoner’s dilemma” issue. But I also suspect that a lot of foreign leaders are thinking that the tariffs are going to be so hard on American consumers and businesses of all sizes, and hence on Republican politicians, that, over the medium term, the tariffs are going to go away regardless of who does or does not negotiate.
Plus which: most foreign leaders actually studied economics back in college. So they know that imposing tit-for-tat tariffs harms their own economies.
Facing MAGA 