Just before the 2024 election, Trump said: “To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is ‘tariff’.” Like an 18th century mercantilist, he thinks exports are good and imports are bad; that any nation that has a trade surplus with the US is doing it wrong. He has been loudly decrying imports and advocating tariffs since the 1980s – first against Japan, now against Mexico, Canada, the EU and, most of all, China. In his first term, in 2018, he imposed duties on Chinese imports: first solar panels and washing machines, then steel and aluminium, then nearly half of all goods from China, worth some $200bn. China responded with tariffs of its own. All these had a modestly negative effect on US growth, but China suffered more: it hurt…
