Liberty was an afterthought during Trump’s performance at the U.N.

Tariff consequences have Trump being compared to Carter and Obama.

If President Donald Trump is trying to emulate Reagan-style toughness with his continued talk of tariffs and trade wars, he’s off the mark. The pain inflicted on American farmers by the continued conflict with China and failure to sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership probably has the heartland thinking more of Jimmy Carter than the Gipper.

Specifically, they’re thinking of the time Carter implemented an embargo against the Soviet Union in retaliation for the communist nation invading Afghanistan. As part of that policy, farmers were prohibited from selling wheat to our Cold War opposition.

The plan backfired. Soviets just ended up buying their grain from other nations or learned to grow it themselves. U.S. farmers lost the market and never truly got it back.

Now we’re seeing that happen again. Already China is importing more soy from Brazil than the United States. Texas pecan growers are losing out to Mexico and South Africa.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has compared the tariffs’ effects to a painful drought — except this disaster is man-made. Farmers are saying that promised federal aid won’t cover the damage, leaving the United States in the odd scenario of borrowing $12 billion from China to pay farmers because they can’t sell their goods to China.

How much longer until farmers start lining up their tractors outside the Department of Agriculture in protest, as they did during the Carter administration? Some farmers who voted for Trump say they thought he would renegotiate trade agreements for America’s benefit — not destroy trade relationships to our detriment.

The goal of Trump’s trade fight is to force people to come to the table, but the strategy simply doesn’t work if someone else can fill our seat. That’s why the Bank of England and European Central Bank both predict that a global trade war would hurt the United States more than any other country. We’re the ones erecting barriers, and that would only drive major economies like European Union and China into a closer relationship, leaving us isolated. In fact, Chinese state media is proposing a trade deal with Japan and South Korea to fill the gap left by a U.S. retreat. The European Union and Japan signed their own deal earlier this year.

From China’s perspective, this trade war doesn’t end with a bang, but with a shrug. Literally. When Trump talked about "winning on trade" at the United Nations Security Council last week, all Foreign Minister Wang Yi had to offer was a casual roll of his shoulders.

More than The Economist, Foreign Policy or The New York Times, it was the satire website The Onion that best encapsulated Trump’s performance: “Everyone At U.N. Watching Trump Speak Can’t Believe They Used To Consider U.S. A Superpower.”

Yes, the United States may still have the world’s largest economy — for now — and incomparable military power. What we’re losing is something less tangible but equally important: our confidence and standing in the eyes of the world as a superpower. Our president’s threats are dismissed as hollow boasts. Our promises are cast aside like a cheap salesman’s pitch.

Friendly nations like Canada and Mexico, our Pacific allies and the European Union, nations whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, can no longer count on us to keep our word, let alone our loyalty. Now they’re targets in a chaotic barrage of tariffs that undermine an international order of trade and commerce delicately constructed with the United States at its center. Trump promised that he only wanted to ditch multilateral trade agreements like NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership in pursuit of new, better deals.

Those deals haven’t arrived, and the United States is starting to face the consequences. The irrational implementation of these trade taxes is scaring off investment at a time when the world should be investing in our growing economy. For the first time in years, foreign direct investment into the United States declined last quarter. Jay Timmons, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, has compared the uncertainty around the tariffs to Obama-era regulations. Comparisons to Obama and Carter aren’t exactly what Trump supporters want to hear.

Beyond their self-inflicted harm, Trump’s tariffs are failing to accomplish their primary goal. The U.S. trade deficit has grown by $30 billion since August 2017.

The nation can’t wait for the warnings and projections about trade consequences to become reality. Congress needs to restrain this president. If current members refuse to step up, then voters should pick new candidates to fill their seats come November.