October 22, 2025
Tariffs Are a Weaker Weapon than Trump Thinks
This article was originally published in Financial Times.
This past summer, Donald Trump’s faith in tariffs appeared vindicated. He sealed lopsided trade deals with the EU, Japan and South Korea, while imposing most of his promised “liberation day” levies without provoking a market meltdown. His trade representative, Jamieson Greer, declared “a new global trading order” in which America uses tariffs to bend the rest of the world to its will.
The biggest problem with tariffs is a basic fact: access to the US market isn’t as vital as Trump imagines.
Trump’s confidence rests on a simple conviction: access to the US market is so vital that other countries will do anything to preserve it. As his press secretary summarised: “Every country wants what we have: the American consumer.” But that confidence is misplaced. Tariffs are a far weaker weapon than the president believes. They are a poor substitute for the modern economic pressure tactics that the US pioneered and China increasingly embraces.
Read the full article on Financial Times.
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