President Trump had one of the most successful uses of tariffs in U.S. history in 2019 when he threatened to slap crippling duties on Mexican goods in retaliation for the wave of illegal immigrants streaming over the border.
Top Mexican officials scurried to Washington to plead for mercy and emerged with a deal for Mr. Trump to drop the threat in exchange for making significant border changes. Within months, the border problem was largely resolved.
Now, Mr. Trump is back for more.
The Republican presidential candidate says he is considering up to 20% tariffs as retaliation for what he sees as unfair practices by America’s trading partners.
“The United States has long been taken advantage of by other countries,” Mr. Trump said at a recent campaign stop in Pennsylvania. “We lose jobs and revenue. They gain everything. … And they wipe out our businesses.”
“I stopped it four years ago, and I will stop it very quickly again,” he said. “We will not let countries come in, take our jobs and plunder our nation into poverty.”
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Economists say that will sock Americans in the pocketbook as importers pass along their higher costs.
Scott Lincicome, a trade expert at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute, said most studies have concluded that Mr. Trump’s tariffs during his first term on various agriculture products, aluminum, steel and solar panels increased costs for American consumers and businesses.
“At the end of the day, we know that Americans — importers, wholesales, retailers, manufacturers or consumers — paid them,” Mr. Lincicome said. “The idea that foreigners paid them is just nonsense.”
Mr. Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, disagreed. He said other trade experts insist that the increased costs of imported goods incentivize producers to make them in the U.S. to avoid tariffs.
“I think the record supports this other view that it causes this dynamic effect where more jobs come into the country,” he said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Anything that you lose on the tariff from the perspective of the consumer, you gain in higher wages, so you’re ultimately much better off. You have more take-home pay, you have better jobs.”
He said tariffs were necessary to challenge trade abusers such as China.
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“We know that China and a number of other countries are using, effectively, slave labor to undercut the wages of American workers. Donald Trump thinks that has to stop,” Mr. Vance said.
Mr. Trump’s reliance on tariffs was a defining element of his first term in office. He battled Mexico, Canada, China and the European Union.
Analysts say some American industries benefited. The Trump tariffs appear to have strengthened the U.S. steel industry.
Manufacturers that used imported steel suffered, and other industries faced retaliatory tariffs from trading partners, which increased costs in other areas.
“We were harming a lot more manufacturers than we were helping,” Mr. Lincicome said.
The Congressional Budget Office projected in 2020, just ahead of the pandemic, that Mr. Trump’s tariffs would cost the average household $1,277 that year.
That was somewhat balanced by government income from the tariffs, which CBO said were worth some $10 billion more yearly.
Mr. Trump’s latest plans call for an eye-for-an-eye approach to trade, imposing reciprocal tariffs on any tariff placed on U.S. exports and a universal tariff of 10% to 20% on all goods generally. He has also floated a whopping 60% tariff on Chinese imports.
Leaning into trade restrictions marks a significant rift with the establishment Republican Party, which has always been the free trade party in Washington. Democratic politicians also have generally been more trade-skeptical.
Among rank-and-file Republicans, however, Mr. Trump’s approach has been popular. Party voters grew increasingly leery of unfettered free trade while he was in office. Rank-and-file Democrats embraced free trade more fully.
Analysts predicted President Biden would reverse some of the tariffs when he took office, but he has largely kept them in place.
For Mr. Trump, tariffs are a means to an end.
In 2019, that end was better borders. He saw a chance to use America’s position as an economic powerhouse to make demands on Mexico.
Ken Cuccinelli, who served as deputy homeland security secretary in the Trump administration, said he picked a perfect target.
“Mexico has a much higher need for the money coming across the border from the United States in trade than is the case for the United States in the other direction,” Mr. Cuccinelli said in an email. “And Trump was the first and only president to ever use that asymmetry to our advantage.”
Erica York, senior economist and research director with the Tax Foundation Center for Federal Tax Policy, said Mr. Trump’s attempts to use tariffs to win better trade terms from China didn’t pay off, and Beijing fought back.
“It is a double whammy of just failure,” she said. “Other reasons Trump talked about — for tariffs more broadly — was reducing the trade imbalance and reviving manufacturing. On all of those grounds, the tariffs failed.”
Vice President Kamala Harris said Mr. Trump’s tariff plans would increase the average household’s costs by $4,000.
“It will mean higher prices on just about every one of your daily needs,” she said at a recent campaign stop in North Carolina.
• Mallory Wilson contributed to this report.
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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