If there’s anything Donald Trump loves more than tariffs, it’s a deal. So you can understand his excitement lately. Over the past few weeks, the president has announced tariff-related deals with three major trading partners—the European Union, Japan, and South Korea—that have been hailed as major victories for the United States. In each case, America’s partners agreed to accept 15 percent tariffs on their exports to the U.S. while lowering trade barriers on American goods and promising to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the U.S. economy—in essence paying Trump to impose trade restrictions on them. “Europe Caves to Trump on Tariffs” read a representative New York Times headline.
In the days following the European Union deal announcement, the White House released a fact sheet quoting all the positive coverage. On Thursday, Jamieson Greer, Trump’s top trade official, published a New York Times op-ed boasting that, with the completion of these deals, the administration had successfully “remade the global order.” But upon closer inspection, Trump’s trade deals aren’t nearly as impressive as they sound. In fact, they aren’t really trade deals in the traditional sense, and they might not benefit the U.S. at all.
Trump did prove the doubters wrong in one important way.
Continue Reading on The Atlantic
This preview shows approximately 15% of the article. Read the full story on the publisher's website to support quality journalism.