A top U.S. economist is taking aim at Donald Trump’s increasing willingness to levy tariffs on the U.S.’s economic allies and enemies, calling the move “doubling down on bad policy.”
Trump tweeted on Tuesday that “tariffs are the greatest!” threatening countries that do not bend to his definition of fair trade with further levies.
Tariffs are the greatest! Either a country which has treated the United States unfairly on Trade negotiates a fair deal, or it gets hit with Tariffs. It’s as simple as that - and everybody’s talking! Remember, we are the “piggy bank” that’s being robbed. All will be Great!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 24, 2018
“It’s hard for me to defend what the president’s done,” said Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum and former director of the Congressional Budget Office. “I was in a White House in the early 2000s when then-President Bush did steel tariffs and those tariffs turned out to be a bad policy error and were reversed. This president went ahead with steel and aluminum tariffs and I believe that was a policy error.”
George W. Bush imposed tariffs of up to 30 per cent on imported steel from countries including Japan, China, Brazil and others in March, 2002. The tariffs were lifted in Dec. 2003 after the World Trade Organization ruled them invalid.
Holtz-Eakin said Trump doesn’t appear to know what he wishes to achieve with the tariffs.
“He’s gone down a path of tariffs against China, which it’s not obvious [if it has] an endgame that will be to the betterment of the world trading system, and he’s threatened these car tariffs and that’s not a good idea either,” he said.
Holtz-Eakin was also vocal on Twitter on Tuesday, calling out Trump’s US$12-billion package to protect American farmers from trade uncertainty.
If tariffs are the greatest and trade wars are easy to win, why do you have to buy the political silence of the farmers? https://t.co/BnZ57t85Ru
— Douglas Holtz-Eakin (@djheakin) July 24, 2018
“What we’ve got now is some pushback in the United States,” Holtz-Eakin said. “People are concerned that this does not hang together as a strategy – his tweets notwithstanding – and what he came out with [Tuesday] is, in my view, just an undisguised attempt to silence some of those critics by allocating US$12 billion to the farm sector.”
“That’s just doubling down on bad policy.”
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