The writer is a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and the author of ‘Chokepoints’
This past summer, Donald Trump’s faith in tariffs appeared vindicated. He sealed lopsided trade deals with the EU, Japan and South Korea, while imposing most of his promised “liberation day” levies without provoking a market meltdown. His trade representative, Jamieson Greer, declared “a new global trading order” in which America uses tariffs to bend the rest of the world to its will.
Trump’s confidence rests on a simple conviction: access to the US market is so vital that other countries will do anything to preserve it. As his press secretary summarised: “Every country wants what we have: the American consumer.” But that confidence is misplaced. Tariffs are a far weaker weapon than the president believes. They are a poor substitute for the modern economic pressure tactics that the US pioneered and China increasingly embraces.