Having watched Joe Biden retain most of the tariffs he inherited, America’s trading partners have been fond of complaining the US president is “continuity Trump” and wondering whether Kamala Harris will be continuity Biden. The first epithet was never entirely fair: Trump’s focus was on closing trade deficits and gaining negotiating leverage, Biden’s mainly about industrial policy. Now Trump is threatening a massive and damaging escalation of trade protection, Harris only has to keep Biden’s policies in place, as she probably will, and she will look positively free-trade Clintonesque (Bill not Hillary) in comparison.
Trump’s actual policy positions are never entirely clear, of course, but he seems determined to justify the superhero-style “Tariff Man” title he awarded himself during his first-term presidency. His platform envisages a policy of reciprocity, setting import taxes on trading partners equivalent to those exacted on US exports. (Those American farmers sheltering behind high tariffs might get nervous about thereby being exposed to competition from low-cost foreign rivals, but details, details.) He also wants a baseline 10 per cent tariff on all imports and 60 per cent on goods from China, and last week suggested the 10 per cent might go to 20.
In private discussions Trump has reportedly floated the idea of using tariff income entirely to replace revenue from the federal income tax. It’s an idea so stupid you feel it ought spontaneously to combust on contact with air: the plan would be literally impossible to implement, given how much tariffs of the requisite size would choke off imports. But at any rate Trump and Robert Lighthizer, his former US trade representative and continuing adviser, are genuine nostalgics for the high tariffs of the 19th century, which they credit for the US’s rise to economic dominance.