The Left Could Learn Something From Trump’s Tariff Gambit
Donald Trump enacted his trade policy at the stroke of a pen for a whole year by acting quickly and assertively while the courts debated his tariffs’ constitutionality. It’s an approach the Left can use to much better ends.
Trump’s tariff policy, and his presidency as a whole, have been a real-world experiment in using the power of the office to affect change even without Congress on its side. The Left should actually learn from this. (Kyle Mazza / Anadolu via Getty Images)
By conventional thinking, Donald Trump’s tariff strategy is a failure: he sidestepped Congress, chose a dubious legal rationale to do it, and now the tariffs have been struck down by the Supreme Court, putting his entire trade agenda at risk. But that’s only one way to look at it.
Looked at another way, Trump’s tariffs were a bold and creative way to kick-start his agenda in an ongoing era of congressional gridlock. Because of the arcane workings of the US legal system, it has taken an entire year for the Supreme Court to get around to striking them down. In that year, as they wound through court after appeal after oral argument, the tariffs have been in place, and they have been arguably one of the most transformational policies of Trump’s entire presidency.
To be clear, they have not been transformational in anything approaching the way that Trump actually intended them to be. The tariffs have not revived US manufacturing; in fact, all evidence suggests they have been the latest major blow to that ailing sector, which has shed thousands of jobs every month for nearly the entire past year.
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