Trump Plots a Trade War

“Former President Donald Trump is planning an aggressive expansion of his first-term efforts to upend America’s trade policies if he returns to power in 2025 — including imposing a new tax on ‘most imported goods’ that would risk alienating allies and igniting a global trade war,” the New York Times reports.

“While the Biden administration has kept tariffs that Mr. Trump imposed on China, Mr. Trump would go far beyond that and try to wrench apart the world’s two largest economies, which exchanged some $758 billion in goods and services last year. Mr. Trump has said he would ‘enact aggressive new restrictions on Chinese ownership’ of a broad range of assets in the United States, bar Americans from investing in China and phase in a complete ban on imports of key categories of Chinese-made goods like electronics, steel and pharmaceuticals.”

Playbook: “Sound familiar? In some ways it should. In his first term, Trump’s decision to slap tariffs on China sent some Republicans into a tizzy, highlighting a growing split in the party between ‘fair trade’ populists and traditional Republicans. But Trump’s new vision is far more expansive.”