One of Donald Trump’s more humorous qualities is his ability to undercut his defenders who rationalize grand plans behind his actions. There is no shortage of sophisticated explanations about Trump’s supposedly real goals of promoting U.S. exports or negotiating more free trade deals. But speaking today in the Oval Office during Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s visit to the U.S., Trump said it isn’t primarily about any of that.
To him, tariffs are a “price that people are going to have to pay to shop in the United States.” He said, “We don’t have to sign deals. They have to sign deals with us. They want a piece of our market.”
“We don’t want a piece of their market. We don’t care about their market,” he said. So all that talk of changing other countries’ unfair trade practices — Trump just said he doesn’t care about them.
He said in some cases that the U.S. would seek other countries lowering their trade barriers, naming India as a top example. But Trump said that is secondary to what he believes is the primary purpose of his trade policy.
He really sincerely believes, despite all evidence to the contrary, that tariffs are paid by foreigners as a kind of access charge to do business with the U.S. He thinks that because the U.S. market is the best in the world, people from other countries should have to pay to do business here.
“For the most part we’re just going to put down a number and say, ‘This is what you pay to shop,'” Trump said, downplaying the idea of more trade agreements. “They’re going to pay for the privilege of being able to shop in the United States of America. It’s very simple.”
He even suggested that this plan has been poorly communicated so far. “I think my people haven’t made it clear. We will sign some deals, but much bigger than that is we’re going to put down the price that people are going to have to pay to shop in the United States.”
“Think of us as a super luxury store,” the president continued. “You’re gonna come, and you’re gonna pay a price, and we’re gonna give you a very good price, we’re gonna make very good deals, and in some cases we’ll adjust, but that’s where it is.”
That’s where it is — complete economic incoherence from start to finish. The U.S. is not one store, the president does not own the country, and he does not get to decide what its prices are. The U.S. contains a complex economy of lots of stores, factories, office buildings, restaurants, and other businesses, which employ millions of different people doing different jobs. Those people make different purchasing decisions for different reasons, both as producers and as consumers. And Americans, not foreigners, are the ones who bear the burden of tariffs because Trump decides he doesn’t like their purchasing decisions.
The faux-sophisticated defenses of Trump’s tariff policy as being driven by export promotion or negotiating more trade deals are blown up by Trump’s own words. He really likes tariffs, and he really doesn’t understand what they are or what they do.