Both sides lose

When a trade war starts

ATRADE war is a painful event to watch, let alone be part of. And one is getting underway between a still nominally Communist China and a formally capitalist United States of America.

This confrontation threatens to be the World War III of trade wars. Our president and agitator-in-chief, Donald J. Trump, pours fuel on the fire by swinging out not just against the Chinese but the very tribunal before which the United States proposes to argue its case: the World Trade Organization. The president sounds like an unhappy plaintiff even before he’s lost his case. There’s no telling what he’ll do or say next as he proceeds to lose friends and undermine America’s influence the world over. The man seems to have no discernible strategy for pursuing the war he has begun.

The president’s chief economic adviser is another television personality. His name is Larry Kudlow, and he admits: “We haven’t yet given China a list of demands on what we want. We haven’t done that but such a list is under discussion.” Now he tells us. He also says that “back-channel discussions” with China are underway, whatever that means. Your guess, Dear Reader, is as good or bad as ours. But the leading power of the all too scrutable West, formerly known as the free world, seems as confused as ever if not more so.

How far we’ve come since the United States had a plain-spoken president named Harry S. Truman and a thoughtful secretary of state, Dean Acheson, who was present at the creation of an understandable foreign policy and had the persistence to stick with it. Instead all we seem to get from this White House is a series of gripes.

Here, for bad example, is an ill-tempered tweet the other day that’s less cogent than just sore at the Chinese and maybe the rest of the world. In it, our irascible president complained that Red China “get tremendous perks and advantages, especially over the U.S. Does anybody think this is fair. We were badly represented. The WTO is unfair to U.S.” But just who represents the United States at the WTO except a delegation chosen by President Trump himself? Our leader feels no need to go into the kind of detail that would expose his own case as little more than a long series of tweets with no discernible point except to blame all comers to this free-for-all—except, naturally, himself.

This president is supposed to be a showman, yet he fails even at that dubious calling for a chief executive, for his act grew boring a long time ago. He sounds mighty defensive for someone who claims he has nothing to be defensive about. He seems to be engaged in a never-ending campaign rally rather than a serious attempt at leadership. He claims new tariffs he slapped on mainland China—and other countries— haven’t hurt American consumers despite all the fears expressed by his critics.

“Despite the Aluminum Tariffs, Aluminum prices are DOWN 4%,” he tweeted. “People are surprised, I’m not! Lots of money coming into U.S. coffers and Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!” What the president failed to note is that the price of aluminum began to fall in February before he announced the tariff. In large part, the stability of the American market for aluminum may be attributed to the administration’s deciding to exempt our Canadian ally from these punitive tariffs it has imposed on all other importers. Canada supplied more than half of American aluminum imports in 2016, and so has helped cushion the blow that the Trump administration’s tariffs inflicted on the American economy. Trying to catch this administration in a consistency is as challenging as netting a slippery eel.

AND SO it goes from day to day or even from minute to minute given the speed of today’s social media. To quote Matthew Shay, who presides over this country’s National Retail Federation, “This is what a trade war looks like, and what we have warned against from the start. We are on a dangerous downward spiral, and American families will be on the losing end. … We urge the administration to change course and stop playing a game of chicken with the nation’s economy.” But how change this administration’s course when it’s still not at all clear what that course is—except always to claim it’s chosen the right one, whatever that may be?

This administration seems to have no idea where it’s headed except the shoals of uncertainty. The captain of the good ship USS America seems to have headed down below, where he issues periodic bulletins assuring the American public that all is well when it’s anything but. If you know where we’re going, Gentle Reader, you may be far ahead of us, and certainly ahead of this Trumped-up administration.