Please Briefers .. if you're not going to read The Art of the Deal, then at least listen to the President directly, unfiltered. Just today he said tariffs remain an option determined by the outcome of the renegotiations under way --- "we'll see what happens".
This was and is a bargaining chip. If the negotiations do not end with a level playing field for the American worker --- in spite of a letter from our esteemed Congress --- the President will impose the tariffs. The media may not understand this, Congress may not understand this, but those sitting across the bargaining table do.
All this angst and finger-pointing and jumping on the President and "Trumpers" is unnecessary.
Scaled back tariffs on steel (exempting Canada and Mexico) remains a sound idea. A healthy domestic steel industry does have value as a national security matter, and if Trump sticks to his guns it appears there could be immediate payoffs in terms of shuttered mills being restarted and laid off workers called back to their jobs. It is not Trump's fault if a limited, targeted program of tariffs intended to protect a vital domestic industry (something that most other nations do as a matter of course) causes a trade war; if that occurs then I hope the President continues to defend our interests, and that of American workers.
Free trade is all well and good in the economics books; in the real world it decimates lives and weakens the middle class. Free trade in the context of globalization is something demanded by elites, on the backs of workers.
Free trade is a concept I support, but only in the context of a level playing field. If Europe tariffs our auto exports at three times the rate we tariff theirs, something is not right. That's not fair to those who build cars here, and I have no philosophical objection whatsoever to equalizing the matter. We should encourage free trade among equals; we unfairly favor consumers at the expense of workers if we insist on allowing third world nations, nations with wage rates and labor, environmental and intellectual property protections not even close to our own, to send us their cheap goods at the expense of domestic workers in industries that remain vital - like steel - who need their jobs to support their families.
Trump is not the usual sort of economic conservative. He favors lower taxes and less regulations, and as conservatives we rightfully cheer his efforts in these areas, but philosophically what Trump cares about is jobs. Jobs to sustain a battered middle class. Trump is probably the first President in my lifetime who understands the dynamic between the interests of consumers and workers, and is not willing to toss the latter to the wolves.
