'Trade Wars Are Good.' Business Is Scared
By Jonathan Chait
March 2, 2018
8:27 am
Since Donald Trump took office, the moneyed interests of the Republican Party have held firm control of Donald Trump’s policy agenda, if not his mouth or his Twitter thumbs. And so, the wild populist promises he offered in a given moment might trigger some momentary panic among his backers, but would predictably vaporize. Now Trump is imposing, or at least threatening to impose, tariffs on steel and aluminum ...
Markets have responded to this outburst with genuine fear. That Trump is seized with such a terrifyingly simplistic and obviously wrong mental model of international trade is hardly surprising. But there are several reasons to believe it is at least plausible that the president will follow through on his threats.
... Trump has a long-standing belief that trade is a zero-sum proposition. He has been expressing versions of this idea since the 1980s ...
Trump actually has the power to do something on tariffs. This makes the issue very unlike other episodes when he has wandered off the party reservation, like DACA and gun control. In those cases, Trump held televised meetings with members of both parties, and alarmed his supporters (and excited Democrats) by repudiating his own positions repeatedly. Both times he quickly reeled it back.
But in those cases, Trump was attempting to build a legislative coalition in Congress ...
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/03/trade-wars-are-good-business-is-finally-scared-of-trump.html
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