Commentary
Starting in 2018, President Trump imposed tariffs on trade with China. It was an unusual approach by any postwar standard. Normally presidents past would impose tariffs on goods from any country in the name of protecting domestic industry, or perhaps target a single country on grounds of national security.
This was different—targeting a single country on economic grounds—and it happened because Trump had a list of countries with whom the United States ran a trade deficit, which he saw as proof of how “they” owed “us” money.
So he started at the top of the list (China) and went down (Mexico, Germany, and even Canada). There is no evidence that he fully understood either what it means to have a “trade deficit” or that these policies could not force any other country to pay anything; American consumers and businesses pay the tariffs as another form of taxation to the U.S. government….