Trump certainly knows how to keep many guessing, which may well be one of the numerous atypical chess moves that his administration has become famed for, especially within the past several days.
As analysts scratched their heads and attempted to make sense of the administration’s position on tariffs, a key Trump advisor – Peter Navarro – laid out a rather clear case in print.
“Donald Trump’s tariffs will fix a broken system,” an op-ed published in the Financial Times attributed to Peter Navarro, highlights the varied rationales underlying Trump’s tariffs, answering several of the queries that reporters have lobbed at the administration to date.
Including the reality that the current tariff situation is not a short-term impulse, but rather a long-term strategy.
The op-ed attributed to Navarro, who serves as senior counsellor for trade and manufacturing, made it clear from the opening lines that the current tariff action is actually designed to address widely perceived grievances in the international trade system.
“The international trade system is broken – and Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariff doctrine will fix it. This long-overdue restructuring will make both the US and global economies more resilient and prosperous by restoring fairness and balance to a system rigged against America,” the op-ed began.
Fair point. After all, sound restructuring does take ample time do execute correctly, particularly restructuring of a longstanding disaster.
“At the heart of this crisis is a trade deficit in goods that has ballooned to more than $1tn annually. The economic models of free trade that predict chronic trade imbalances will always be eliminated through price adjustments via exchange rates are dead wrong,” the op-ed continued.
Yikes! That must have quite the cumulative effect.
Tellingly, the op-ed also provides a healthy dose of quantitative data, lest the media accuse it of serving as pure propaganda.
“The US cumulative trade deficits in goods from 1976 – the year chronic deficits began – to 2024 have transferred over $20tn of American wealth into foreign hands. That’s more than 60 per cent of US GDP in 2024. Foreign interests have taken over vast swaths of US farmland, housing, tech companies, and even parts of our food supply,” the op-ed continued.
Now that is one of the most troubling concerns of all.
After all, who in their right mind would want a bunch of literal communists buying up a bunch of farmland … conveniently close to American military bases?
The op-ed also also proceeds to criticize a host of other perceived grievances against the United States, including “the barrage of non-tariff weapons foreign nations use to strangle American exports, unfairly boost their shipments to the US, and wall off their own markets.”
“These tools include currency manipulation, value added tax distortions, dumping, export subsidies, state-owned enterprises, IP theft, discriminatory product standards, quotas, bans, opaque licensing regimes, burdensome customs procedures, data localisation mandates and, increasingly, the use of “lawfare” in places like the EU to target America’s largest tech firms,” the op-ed continued.
Without a doubt.
Currency manipulation has been one of the most devastatingly effective tools of all, and it is undoubtedly the primary tool that made China filthy rich.
Alongside the communist nation’s widespread IP theft, of course.
Little wonder that China just pegged its currency even lower to the dollar in response to Trump’s declaration of an additional 50% tariff, in its latest salvo against the current presidential administration.
“A trade system where we face higher tariffs, steeper non-tariff barriers and no viable path to resolution is nothing more than an ‘honour system’ in a world with no honour among cheaters. That’s why America must – and now is – defending itself,” the op-ed added.
How nice it would be to live in a time in which an honor system actually meant something.
That said, it’s rather difficult to achieve honor of any kind in a world seething with arguably misguided outrage.
At that point, the op-ed segues into the crux of its argument … which is that the current administration is not at all interested in a “pause” on tariffs.
In fact, the current administration may well not even be interested in negotiation, in particular quick-fix negotiations that do little to address the root causes of trade imbalances, as portrayed to the public.
“This is not a negotiation. For the US, it is a national emergency triggered by trade deficits caused by a rigged system,” the op-ed asserted.
And with that, it is abundantly clear that the Trump administration is indeed committed to the trade war in the long haul, especially with regards to enemies of the state.
Author: Ofelia Thornton
