When President Trump announced a trade truce with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker last week, some of his fans called it a vindication of the administration’s strategy to date. The truce beats a further escalation of tariffs — but as I argue at Bloomberg Opinion, nothing much has been achieved for the U.S. so far and there’s no sign anything is going to be achieved soon.
Trump episodically claims that he wants zero trade barriers all around, and it’s a good thing that we’re going to have talks with the EU about liberalization. But we didn’t need to place tariffs on steel and aluminum, in the process inflicting damage on the many American companies that use steel and aluminum in making their own products, to get Europe to the table.
Negotiations with Europe to bring trade barriers down were further along before Trump took office than they are now. Trump is the one who froze those negotiations for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, in order to launch his trade war.
Many other trade agreements have been concluded over the last few years without any need for self-destructive tariffs. The EU and Japan just made a deal. Neither had to restrict imports from the other first. . . .