Why Trump Wants Tariffs
He sees them as a way to enhance his personal power, at home and abroad.
April 7, 2025
President Donald Trump’s hastily kludged together tariff plan has global financial markets swooning. His plan has accomplished two things that befuddled Democrats couldn’t: Tariffs have plunged Mr. Trump into the first true crisis of his second term, and they have American voters wondering if the president is fit for office.
It is much too early, however, to draft obituaries either for the Trump presidency or the MAGA movement. If there is one lesson since the president descended the escalator at Trump Tower in 2015, it is not to write this man off. A guy who can turn a mug shot into a presidential portrait should never be discounted, and disasters that would ruin lesser talents leave him unfazed.
What we are seeing is classic Trump. The president believes in himself and his core intuitions and convictions. He believes the analysts and policymakers who disagree with him are foolish and weak. When he encounters resistance, his instinct isn’t to compromise and reconsider. It’s to double down on his bets, hype up the drama and intimidate his opponents through bold strokes and tough threats. Show him a Gordian knot and he whips out his sword.
As his policies at home and abroad encounter resistance—a resistance sometimes grounded less in the obstinacy of his enemies than in the unyielding nature of facts—Mr. Trump becomes more determined. This method has worked for him in the past, and he believes it will work for him now.
Mr. Trump’s abiding goal appears to be to maximize his personal power, not to win arguments with trade economists or to boost stock prices. Domestically, he believes that the political strength he gains from asserting total control over American tariff policy will intimidate businesses into supporting him. He believes that the bonds with his supporters will survive an economic rough patch.
Internationally, the president hopes that his shock and awe tariff tactics will boost his—and America’s—power and prestige. Access to the American market, he believes, is the most powerful weapon this side of a nuclear bomb. In perhaps the most naked display of American economic power since President Dwight Eisenhower forced Britain to abandon its Suez adventure in 1956 by threatening to attack the British pound, Mr. Trump wants to force American allies and adversaries alike to recognize his power and conform to his priorities.
It is an understatement to call this a flex. Mr. Trump knows that trade with the U.S. is vital to the prosperity and even the stability of dozens of countries. He is aware that American guarantees underwrite the security of much of the world. By telling the world that both trade rules and security guarantees depend solely on his will, he is concentrating the greatest possible amount of power in his hands. The reckless and arbitrary nature of his tariff schedule emphasizes how vulnerable others are to his decisions while advertising the absence of domestic constraints on his power.
Mr. Trump will need all the power he can get. The international crises confronting this administration grow larger and more dangerous by the day. Vladimir Putin has taken no steps toward genuine compromise in Ukraine and if anything has cozied up to China.
Xi Jinping is also standing firm, responding to the latest round of U.S. tariffs with retaliatory tariffs of his own—even as he steps up military preparations against Taiwan. In the Middle East, bombing the Houthis has to date produced no strategic breakthroughs. And as U.S. pressure on Iran and its Houthi allies grows, and the potential for more fighting in the Middle East rises, Russia and China aren’t walking away from their wounded and weakened Iranian friends.
The question as always with Mr. Trump is how he intends to use the power he has accumulated. Does he want a fairer global-trading system, or are his instincts purely mercantilist? Does he seek to make the North Atlantic Treaty Organization more effective by shocking the Europeans into behaving less foolishly, or is his real goal to break it? Does the president want to reform government, or is the Department of Government Efficiency an attempt to weaken Washington’s capacity to restrain business interests? Does he care about policy, or is his entire political career an _expression_ of egotism and concern for his family’s financial future? Is he really out to conquer Canada?
Mr. Trump himself may not know the answers to these questions. But one way or another, the steps he takes in the coming months will establish his place in history. For good or for ill, it will be huge.
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Appeared in the April 8, 2025, print edition as 'Why Trump Wants Tariffs'.