President Trump's views on trade, tariffs and multinational trade deals were set in stone long before he became president.
But despite steady pushback from mainstream economists, many of whom claim that the U.S. economy's recent gains have come in spite of tariffs, Trump's populist rhetoric on trade represent perhaps his most consistent political stance and may be one of his strongest assets in what is expected to be a long and bitter reelection fight in 2020.
In the 1980s, Trump lambasted Japan for "taking advantage of" the U.S., along with other countries. He railed against the trade deficits the U.S. had amassed with Japan and other trade partners. "It's time for us to end our vast deficits by making Japan, and others who can afford it, pay," Trump wrote in an open letter "To The American People" that ran as a full-pageDuring Japan's economic boom in the '80s, the U.S.
Trump's depiction of the U.S. being ravaged by trade wasn't all wrong. "Previous administrations had a kind of willfully naive view of protectionism that was being engaged in by other countries ... and how it harms U.S. industry," Kuttner said. "In that respect, Trump used trade as part of his general story about economic nationalism.", as his administration dangled steel and aluminum tariffs.
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