LIZ PEEK: Will Trump’s tariff battles be just a bump in the road or make a mess of everything?

Even God took the seventh day off. 

Not Donald Trump. The blitz of new programs and initiatives emanating from the White House in just two weeks is unprecedented and encouraging. There are so many things that are broken in our country; President Trump seems determined to tackle them all. (It makes you wonder just what Joe Biden and his hapless crew were up to for the past four years.)

As of today, President Trump has been in the Oval Office for just over two weeks; in that time he has pushed through much-needed reforms of the Washington bureaucracy, fired a slew of people responsible for weaponizing the Department of Justice, banned DEI programs and “gender-affirming care”, tossed much of the Green New Deal out the window, persuaded Panama to drop their participation in China’s Belt & Road project, enabled the deportation of heinous criminals and brought home hostages from Venezuela.

TRUMP AGREES TO PAUSE TARIFFS ON CANADA IN EXCHANGE FOR MORE BORDER ENFORCEMENT

Just when it seemed safe to tune out for a nanosecond, Trump announced over the weekend on Truth Social he had “ordered precision Military air strikes on the Senior ISIS Attack Planner and other terrorists he recruited and led in Somalia.” He added that the Pentagon had “targeted this ISIS Attack Planner for years, but Biden and his cronies wouldn’t act quickly enough to get the job done.” Trump further said, “The message to ISIS and all others who would attack Americans is that “WE WILL FIND YOU, AND WE WILL KILL YOU!” Unlike Biden, who mysteriously imagined that saying “Don’t” would deter our enemies, Trump gets it done.

So much winning. Will his tariff battles sink his momentum? Bring the Trump agenda to a halt? 

MEXICO AGREES TO DEPLOY 10,000 TROOPS TO US BORDER IN EXCHANGE FOR TARIFF PAUSE

Not likely. The president announced in recent days that he would impose 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada (other than oil, on which he will levy a 10% duty) as well as a blanket 10% tariff on China. He explained that the penalties were punishment for those countries’ failure to stop the flow of undocumented people and fentanyl coming across our borders; he wants their help in eliminating the threat to Americans from both those sources.

He may get it. Faced with harsh penalties, why would Canada and Mexico not want to help U.S. authorities tighten our borders and cut down on fentanyl trafficking? Why wouldn’t China try to block shipments of fentanyl precursors to the U.S.? More than 70,000 Americans died of fentanyl poisoning in 2023, more than died in car crashes (roughly 40,000) or from gun violence (47,000). We fight back against those tragedies. Why not fentanyl?

TRUMP’S TARIFF CRITICS ARE TRADING ON OVERBLOWN AND UNFOUNDED FEARS

Not only should our neighbors want to drive down illegal and lethal activity on our borders, a trade war with the U.S. will damage their economies much more than it will hurt ours. Economists are projecting that the tariffs could throw both Mexico and Canada into recession; China’s economy is already struggling and will also suffer damage from expanded tariffs. The hit to U.S. growth, now running close to 3%, would be much more modest. While exports to the U.S. account for 18% of Canada’s GDP and 24% of the GDP of Mexico, exports from the U.S. to those countries make up less than 3% of America’s economy. 

That’s not to say that imposing tariffs on major trading partners isn’t risky. Bloomberg and other left-leaning talking heads were aghast at Trump’s threats, warning of a major hit to global trade and economic activity. They and others are warning that the tariffs will drive up inflation as importers adjust prices to cover the new tariffs.  Trump himself has acknowledged that U.S. consumers might feel some “pain” from his tariffs, but refused to budge, saying that “it will all be worth the price that must be paid.”

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Markets initially plunged on fears of a developing trade war, but then Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, announced that Trump had agreed to put the tariffs on hold for a month. Later in the day, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that Trump had also agreed to a one-month pause on the tariffs to be levied on Canada. Stocks rebounded from their lows, in hopes that future negotiations with both countries would resolve the issue.

The gloom-and-doom forecasts are standard issue from anti-Trumpers who constantly underestimate the president. He is using tariffs to exact concessions, and we have seen that the tactic can work. Faced with the threat of tariffs just recently, as well as certain other penalties, the president of Columbia did a U-turn and agreed to accept flights of deported migrants from that country who were in the U.S. illegally.  

Fear-mongering is about all the Democrats have; their approval ratings are at historic lows and they appear leaderless. Trump’s flood of programs and proclamations has them gasping for breath and searching for an issue with which they can derail the president’s agenda. They warn (and are perhaps hoping) that Trump’s tariffs will undermine his campaign pledge to bring prices down; they remember how devastating decades-high inflation was to Joe Biden’s approval ratings. But unlike Biden, whose ability to communicate declined disastrously during his presidency, there is a good chance that Trump can convince Americans that saving lives and securing our border is more important than a 0.4% hit to GDP (the estimate from the Tax Foundation) and a minor increase in inflation. Especially if he succeeds.

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Meanwhile, most of Trump’s initiatives are popular. In the main, he is fulfilling campaign promises and enacting measures that put America first. Trump talks about the world ripping us off, for good reason. Prior administrations, including President Joe Biden’s, allowed our trade deficit to expand past an unsustainable trillion dollars per year; they permitted NATO countries to fall short on their defense commitments, looked the other way as China took over the Panama Canal, Russia invaded Crimea and Mexico failed to control the cartels endangering American citizens.

So, no. Trump’s tariffs on trade partners may cause market jitters and a boost to some prices – like gasoline – but our guess is the president’s agenda will continue to roll forward, making America great again.

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