The data is in on how voters view President Donald Trump’s bold approach to trade and economic renewal, with a recent Harvard CAPS-Harris survey showing over half the country believes tariffs are necessary to correct an imbalanced global trade landscape.
However, many voters also view President Trump’s tariff policies as a set of negotiation tactics with economic goals that go beyond the direct benefits the tariffs themselves will confer – benefits that include recouped revenue through the imposed tariffs and more competitive U.S. manufacturing.
A majority of Americans believe the tariffs Trump is imposing are a strategic negotiation tactic intended to force more favorable financial agreements across the board, and voters are giving the president a wide berth to use tariffs as leverage in these negotiations.
Americans say by seventeen points – 59 percent to 42 percent – that they believe President Trump is using tariffs as a negotiation tactic and may change them later. Republicans say Trump is using tariffs as a negotiation tactic by 32 points – 66 percent to 34 percent – and independents agree by 28 points. Democrats say by four points Trump plans to keep tariffs in place permanently, but nearly half of Democrats – 48 percent – also believe Trump is using tariffs as a negotiation tactic.
In political circles, there has been a flair up of discussion surrounding the use of tariffs as part of an overhaul to global trade that will not only renew American manufacturing and increase revenue but could also push for America First economic policies in other areas.
In an April 7th opinion piece in the New York Times, historian Jennifer Burns suggested the Trump Administration may be using tariffs as a tactic to bolster their hand in negotiations that serve the American economy beyond the boost in revenue and manufacturing through tariffs.
Likewise, in a recent episode of NPR’s Planet Money, Greg Rosalsky discussed the possibility that tariffs may be a spoke in a larger wheel of economic reforms President Trump is planning to take. These reforms could include keeping the U.S. dollar as an international reserve currency while reducing the cost to Americans that reserve-currency status currently burdens us with.
While maintaining international reserve currency status confers many benefits to Americans, it also strengthens the dollar, which arguably makes U.S. exports more expensive and makes it more difficult for American manufacturing companies to compete globally.
One of President Trump’s top economic advisors, Stephen Miran, argued in a recent speech that, “reserve function of the dollar has caused persistent currency distortions and contributed, along with other countries’ unfair barriers to trade, to unsustainable trade deficits.” Miran also stated that, “these trade deficits have decimated our manufacturing sector and many working-class families and their communities, to facilitate non-Americans trading with each other.”
According to this interpretation, a new approach to America’s role as the reserve currency to the globe may be in order, and tariffs may play an important role in negotiations by demonstrating that the United States is no longer going to be pushed around economically.
Americans who trust President Trump’s overarching vision for a renewed America First economy are giving the president room to use tariffs as one tool that could serve at least three major goals: recouping revenues through tariffs, strengthening U.S. manufacturing, and using tariffs as a negotiation tactic to demonstrate an unwillingness to allow the United States to be taken advantage of going forward.
Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
Reproduced with permission. Original here: Dealmaker-In-Chief: Conservatives Give Trump Room To Use Tariffs As A Negotiation Tactic For Better Economic Policies
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