Trump's $200 billion mistake

The president has just one economic idea. It's very bad.

President Trump walks away from a red Chinese flag and toward an American flag while waving goodbye
(Image credit: Thomas Peter-Pool/Getty Images)

If there's something worse than a U.S. president with no economic ideas, it's got to be a president with just a single economic idea. Lookin' at you, President Trump.

Trump has one really big, all-encompassing idea, and he's had it for decades: Global trade has been terrible for America. But then Trump compounds the error: Tariffs are the easy cure for those terrible trade deficits. As Trump reportedly vented last summer: "I want tariffs. And I want someone to bring me some tariffs."

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James Pethokoukis

James Pethokoukis is the DeWitt Wallace Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he runs the AEIdeas blog. He has also written for The New York Times, National Review, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, and other places.