On Wednesday, April 2, dubbed "Liberation Day" by Donald Trump, the full-scale trade war he launched got tougher, with the announcement of a new wave of tariffs. These will target products from partners deemed to be "ripping us off" (which are, seemingly, numerous), Trump said. Moreover, starting on Thursday, April 3, all imported automobiles will be subject to 25% tariffs, just like steel and aluminum coming from abroad. Nearly all economists have called it madness, but the madman doesn't care.
Trump draws his inspiration from a rather outdated model: William McKinley, his White House predecessor, who was president from 1897 to 1901. At that time "we were a very wealthy country, and we’re going to be doing that now," he said during his campaign, overlooking the grim dark side of the period, known as the "Gilded Age": Poverty which reached huge proportions and governments that were riddled with corruption. According to historians, aside from some majorly rich individuals, such as John D. Rockefeller in oil, J. P. Morgan in finance and Andrew Carnegie in steel, very few Americans fared well at the end of the 19th century.
Trump adores McKinley because, he says, he was a "successful businessman" – actually, not at all: he was a lawyer – and no doubt also because, after a very short war, he forced Spain to cede Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines to the United States. Above all, he is thrilled because McKinley was the "Tariff King," who "made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent." He loves him so much that he decided, at his inauguration, to restore the name Mount McKinley to the US's highest mountain, a name it had long held. Indeed, under Barack Obama, the mountain's indigenous name, Denali, has been reinstated for the Alaskan mountain. To Trump's supporters, this was an example of "woke" politics.
'Illusory sense of security'
Protectionism had been McKinley's political hallmark. In 1890, while he was a representative of Ohio in Congress, he had the McKinley Tariff passed, which raised average tariffs from 38% to nearly 50%; once president, he signed a law, in 1897, that went even further. Yet what Trump seems not to know is that, toward the end of his life, McKinley changed his stance. He scrapped his legendary protectionism.
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