Trump presents tariffs as a way of protecting the American economy from external dependencies. But look closer to the way he uses them and you will find no cohesive protectionist strategy. Angelos Chryssogelos and Monika Brusenbauch-Meislova argue that Trump’s use of tariffs can best be understood as a feature of his populism, reinforcing the rhetoric of defending the “people” against the free trade “elites”, rather than as an economic strategy.
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The early months of the second Trump presidency have been characterized, just like his first one, by the Republican president’s seemingly erratic and inconsistent application of tariffs. While Trump often oscillates between contradictory positions on issues of external policy, tariffs and protectionism are perhaps the hallmark of his thinking about international politics, dating back to the 1980s. A self-described “tariff man” who once called tariffs the “the most beautiful word in the dictionary“, Trump sees protectionism as a necessary and even existential element for the American economy to survive in a globalized world.
Yet while Trump is a well-known fan of tariffs, it’s still striking how he uses them. Rather than instituting a consistent and strategic plan of protectionism, sheltering specific sectors of the American economy and trying to draw back investments and manufacturing jobs as he had repeatedly promised in his campaigns, Trump’s tariffs are used in ways that serve few discernible goals or lead to any measurable economic benefits.
What are Trump’s tariffs for?
In his first term, tariffs on Mexico and Canada were used as a way to tear up NAFTA, yet the US ultimately agreed on a renegotiated free trade agreement in North America (USMCA) that was very similar to NAFTA. Similarly, tariffs on China were eventually withdrawn after an interim commercial agreement with China in early 2020. Analysts and economists were near unanimous that these tariffs had done little for the American economy, if anything they had hurt (because of retaliatory measures from other countries) the economic position of key constituencies in swing states.
Much as like in his first term, protectionism in Trump’s policy remains a puzzling phenomenon, escaping conventional cost/benefit analysis that mainstream political economy uses to understand states’ trade policies.
In his second term, Trump seems to use tariffs in a slightly different way, instrumentalizing them for broader political and strategic gains, such as forcing countries in Latin America to receive back expelled migrants or Canada to stem the flow of illegal drugs into the USA. This has led to an erratic trade policy where tariffs are announced and then postponed within a matter of days or even hours, often without clear reason or indication that Trump’s original demands had been met. Much as like in his first term, protectionism in Trump’s policy remains a puzzling phenomenon, escaping conventional cost/benefit analysis that mainstream political economy uses to understand states’ trade policies.
On the basis of the above, the question poses itself: what purpose do tariffs serve for Trumpism? What interests is he pursuing through this contradictory policy? In a recent article we published in International Affairs, looking at the trade policy of Trump’s first term as well as the trade policy of pro-Brexit Conservatives in the UK, we propose a novel answer that goes beyond conventional materialist cost/benefit explanations. To account for Trump’s protectionism, we argue, we must put his populism at centre stage, and once we do so, we must appreciate populism’s discursive and mobilizational qualities, used to strengthen the bonds between populist leader and followers.
Tariffs as a form of populism
Populism has been historically associated with protectionism, from Latin America in the 1940s and 1950s, to newly decolonized African states in the 1960s and 1970s, to Trump today. In fact however, this connection is much more tenuous, since there have been as many examples of populists who were supporters of free trade – starting with the agrarian People’s Party in the US in the 1890s. Populism as a “thin-centred ideology” need not cue specific trade policies, be they liberal or protectionist. The distinctiveness of populism in the field of trade then must be understood separately from the question of policy content.
We argue instead that populism must be understood as a specific political discourse, a way to articulate all kinds of policies – liberal or protectionist, left-wing or right-wing – as a clash between the virtuous, downtrodden “people” and an unresponsive corrupt “elite”. In this way, one can identify a consistent populist logic in how trade policies are presented regardless of the content of actual policies followed. In our analysis we show that, despite their very opposing trade preferences, the discourses of both protectionist Trump and strongly pro-free trade Conservative Brexiteers in the second half of the 2010s followed very similar articulatory modes flowing from their populism.
Trade is presented as a way to redeem the people while also symbolizing the “people” taking back “control” of its destiny by engaging in voluntaristic trade policies, unhinged from institutional and multilateral constraints.
Populist trade discourses generally exhibit some main characteristics. They present the previous trade policies followed by the “elites” as betrayal of the “people’s” interests. They also present their own new trade policies (liberal or protectionist) as omnibus solutions that can address economic inequalities and representational/political deficits all at the same time. Trade is presented as a way to redeem the people while also symbolizing the “people” taking back “control” of its destiny by engaging in voluntaristic trade policies, unhinged from institutional and multilateral constraints. In all these ways, trade becomes an “empty signifier” of a populist discourse, allowing many different groups who identify with the ‘people’ to see in radically new trade policies a way for them to be elevated and recognized.
The implication of this analysis is that populism fully upends conventional and mainstream understandings of the political economy of trade. Rather, a highly technical and materialistic policy area becomes articulated in a highly antagonist, emotive and charged way, used to strengthen the coherence of populist movements and heighten their mobilization against the elites: supporters of trade orthodoxy, experts, apologists of hostile “outsiders” who are “cheating” the people of their prosperity and sovereignty etc.
Populism fully upends conventional and mainstream understandings of the political economy of trade.
If this is true, then Trump’s tariffs do have an internal logic, however perverse. They are a self-perpetuating political strategy whose goals are highly political, symbolic and emotive rather than economic and pragmatic. They aim to maintain Trump’s image as defender of the people and foe of the elites, fighting for the sovereignty of the people at home (against the elites) and abroad (against foreign adversaries). The alignment of Trump’s tariffs with other political framings – targeting primarily countries seen as antagonistic to the US due to migration (Mexico) or as geopolitical (China) and ideological foes (liberal EU and Canada) – further underlines the logic of the instrumentalization of tariffs for the broader goals of Trumpism.
The question poses itself of course, how sustainable is a strategy that relies on the emotive, symbolic and discursive framing of a policy that has very real material repercussions for large parts of US society, including many supporters of Trump’s. For now, Trump believes that the political benefits from his populist/protectionist posturing outweigh any material costs of his tariffs. If he proves correct, this will have severe implications about ways we analyse and understand trade policy formation more generally.
This analysis, if correct, also has two implications for the British government, who is currently hoping to avoid protectionist measures from Trump. On the one hand, Keir Starmer’s approach to focus on personally courting Trump rather than developing detailed proposals of trade adjustment or side-payments is the right one, to the extent that tariffs are a main component of Trump’s populist identity. On the other hand, however, tariffs are not just personal for Trump, but part of a broader populist ideological vision, whereby trade serves to divide the world between friends and enemies of the “people”. For the UK to fully avoid Trump’s protectionism in the future, it will need to show that it aligns fully with his ideological vision of a new protectionist and nationalist world order. Whether the current Labour government can commit to such a vision, even just cosmetically, is an open question.
All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of LSE British Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image credit: Jimwatson in Shuterstock
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