Jonathan Bernstein: “While presidents are almost always the most public face of the policies they support, most will try to find allies that allow them to depersonalize things to some extent. Normal presidents love having bipartisan support; if that’s unavailable, they’ll at least fall back on their parties. Trump is out there alone on topic after topic, from his border wall to Yemen. On trade, he’s especially isolated. Yes, he’s brought a handful of Republicans with him, and on China in particular he may have a few added allies. But overall, Trump’s trade wars are going to result in some unusually personal successes or failures.”
“Even under the best of circumstances, this would be a very delicate issue for a president. Expanded trade tends to produce overall gains for the economy at the expense of losses in specific sectors. That’s dangerous enough, since visible losses can be politically potent. But starting a trade war not only imposes specific losses when other countries retaliate, it also risks serious damage to the broader economy. That’s a whole lot of risk for a president with very little potential reward.”
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