Trump tariff threats could wreck the economy

Former President Donald Trump’s tariff proposals are bad enough, indeed awful, but his hypocrisy is just as bad.

Trump, who miserably failed to cut the trade deficit or boost manufacturing in his first term as president, is pushing an across-the-board import tariff of between 10% and 20% that would almost certainly cause immense price hikes domestically, goad other countries into retaliating, and perhaps set off an international trade war with consequences reminiscent of the Smoot-Hawley tariff that colossally exacerbated the 20th century’s Great Depression.