Trump's tariff wall is a break with the past

Donald Trump's return to the White House has ushered in a new era of American trade policy, one that represents a fundamental break from the past—including his own first term.

- IAN BREMMER

The so-called "tariff wall" that Trump intends to build around the United States is not just a more aggressive version of his transactional first-term policies. Rather, it represents a far more ambitious effort to reshape the global economic order and America's place in it, driven by a president significantly less deterred by consequences than last time.

The first bricks of this tariff wall were laid on March 4 with the imposition of 25 percent tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico that had been initially threatened in early February and delayed at the last minute. The US also doubled the 10 percent tariffs on Chinese goods it had imposed a month prior, bringing the cumulative rate on Chinese imports above 30 percent. Canada and Mexico immediately announced retaliatory measures targeting politically sensitive US industries and states.

After two days of furious lobbying and market turmoil (which Trump blamed "globalists" for), cars from Mexico and Canada and products compliant with the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) had been granted a month-long reprieve from the duties.

But these temporary exemptions should not be taken as a sign that the president is backing off tariffs on America's closest trading partners. Trump has vowed to levy 25 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum imports by March 12, which will hit Canada especially hard. In addition, he intends to impose tariffs on global auto imports on April 2, a move that would be felt not only in Japan, South Korea, and Germany but also in Mexico and Canada, where US carmakers have built complex supply chains.