I’ve been writing about manufacturing in the US since the 1980s, and it’s been heart-wrenching to report on dozens of factory closings and the devastation they have done to workers and communities. As the nation grasped for ways to slow these plant closings, I also wrote about Washington’s use of carefully employed trade measures, like targeted tariffs, and how they helped save some plants and jobs, especially in the steel industry.
Carefully targeted tariffs can be a winning strategy, but Donald Trump’s obsession with tariffs – especially across-the-board ones that are neither careful nor targeted – has already shown itself to be a lose-lose strategy. Perhaps it’s too generous to use the word strategy to describe what the president is doing, because his tariffs seem based on fiat and whim, not on thoughtful planning.
