President Donald Trump and his economic team have offered various justifications for the tariffs the administration has begun to impose on trade partners. 

Trump has consistently advocated the use of tariffs as a tool of economic policy since at least the 1980s, when Japan threatened to rival the United States’s output. In favoring tariffs, he is at odds with mainstream economists, who generally say trade barriers restrain commerce. The president also represents a departure from the free-trade direction of the Republican Party over the past few decades.