There is a case to be made for higher levies on imports.
America needs to rebuild its industrial base, it can’t always be reliant on its main geopolitical adversary for a vast range of tech and consumer goods, and it needs to bring production back onshore.
Former President Joe Biden was trying to do all that with his huge range of subsidies, especially for microchips, and now Trump is pursuing the same goals, but with tariffs as the main tool instead.
It has become the new consensus in American economic policy, and, whoever is in charge, it is likely to stay in place.
The rest of the world will just have to get used to it.
The trouble is, the tariffs have been poorly planned, and badly executed.
They should have been announced a long way in advance so that companies had the time to reconfigure their supply chains.
For example, iPhones.
If it will take Apple until 2028 to build the necessary manufacturing capacity in the US, why not wait until then before the tariff is introduced?
If it will triple the cost of an iPhone, why not phase the tariff in gradually so that the market has time to adjust?
Perhaps most of all, talk to industries first to figure out what the impact might be instead of raising the tariffs overnight, and then suspending them after some frantic lobbying from a series of bewildered chief executives.
It remains to be seen whether Apple can build the factories it will need in the US.
As an insurance policy, at least, it will have to try. It can’t risk going through another week with huge tariffs hanging over it.
VACANCY.
Horse whisperer needed for stable genius.
