Does wrecking one of your country’s most important industries and alienating your trading partners sound like a good idea? To Donald Trump, it does. The new auto tariffs will be an economic and geopolitical disaster.
Trump’s apparent objective is to force every auto manufacturer that wants access to the American market to build its vehicles here. The irony, of course, is that this tactic might work in the long run for another president, but not for Trump. The auto manufacturers aren’t going to make investment decisions involving billions of dollars based on the statements of a man with Trump’s well-deserved reputation for capricious and whimsical decision-making.