In case you haven’t seen it, on Friday afternoon President Trump published an op-ed on the Wall Street Journal website titled: “My Tariffs Have Brought America Back,” and it appeared in the Saturday morning print edition. I don’t think people focused on it because everyone was talking about it Kevin Warsh’s magnificent nomination of Mr. trump to be chairman of the Fed. Still, his piece is worth checking out, which is something of a rebuttal to all of the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board’s criticism of Mr. Trump’s tariff policies. trump

Anyway, the president makes a lot of important points. For one thing, he points out that there was never any retaliation against his tariffs, and so all the Smoot-Hawley talk of the 1930s turned out to be false alarms. Instead of retaliation, there were agreements, and Mr. Trump points to agreements with Communist China, Great Britain, the European Union, Japan and several Southeast Asian countries. However, he said, the deals lowered barriers to American exports and may have led to stock market booms, not just here in the United States, but in every country that came to the negotiating table.

In the meantime, I’ll just insert that Smoot-Hawley raised the tariffs to 60 or 70 percent. However, most of Trump’s effective tariffs are actually closer to 15 percent. And as the president points out, a couple of $100 billion in fee-related revenue have contributed to reducing the budget deficit by up to 27 percent. US exports have increased greatly, imports are lower, and the trade deficit has narrowed substantially.

Mr. Trump gives much of the credit for the economic boom to the One, Big, Beautiful Bill, regarding tax cutslighter regulation and “Drill, Baby, Drill”. However, their trade reciprocity policy really looks like a great success.

To quote Mr. Trump: “We’ve shown, conclusively, that, applied correctly, tariffs don’t hurt growth: they promote growth and greatness, as I’ve always said.” And he also cites a study by the Harvard Business School that foreign producers and large non-US corporations are paying at least 80 percent of the costs of the tariffs. very interesting He also notes that the various trade deals brought about by the tariff tool are generating huge foreign investment in America.

Now, Mr. Trump likes to use $18 trillion. The official White House website says $9.6 trillion. Of course, she loves to beautify, and anyway, who says she won’t get engagements? And anyway, only getting half is remarkable.

Another important point of his tariff piece was the use of tariffs in international diplomacy, where commercial diplomacy became an important tool of national security. And this is something that we hope the pending Supreme Court decision will fully take into account.

Today, Mr. Trump got an agreement from India to stop buying Russian oil, in return for which America will reduce its tariff in India to 18 percent of 25 percent. Another intersection of commercial policy with foreign policy. All in all, Trump’s reciprocating tariffs have surely contributed to the Trump economic boom. And you know which people? Another day I will tell you why he is truly a free hearted trader.