The Tariffs of April

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When I see epic, self-inflicted disasters crowned by poor planning, slovenly, often outdated thinking, remarkable carelessness, and predictions of victory that are little more than slogans, the qualities of leadership that led to World War I — and the way that it was fought — have a way of coming to mind. They did so, for example, during the pandemic, and they do so when contemplating the pointless “race” to net zero.

And so, when thinking about the crisis dramatically deepened by “liberation” day, I recalled “The General,” a poem from 1917 by Siegfried Sassoon…

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Tariffs: 'Liberation' Day

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April 2 will be “liberation day for America” as President Donald Trump unveils his tariff hikes, he promised — one of the “most important days in modern American history,” according to Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

Trump will say what he’s going to say, but the basic picture he paints has not changed for decades, although the role of principal villain may do so (in the 1980s, it was Japan). Leavitt sets it out again: A lack of reciprocity has contributed to a “large and persistent annual trade deficit that’s gutted out industries and hollowed out key workforces.” This, the president says, will now change.

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Yellen and China — Reality and Illusion

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Although the “rules” that governed the Cold War were never so clearcut as many now imagine, they were a model of clarity compared with how America’s relations with China are currently run. The frank acknowledgment that the U.S. and the USSR were enemies made that contest easier to “manage”— and so, thanks to determination, luck, and the courage of one Soviet lieutenant-colonel, here we still are.

Our relationship with China, by contrast, is an updated version of pre-1914 great power rivalry that has evolved into something that may be more dangerous, not least because our tangled economic relationship makes it hard to say aloud how things really stand. And so it is to Treasury Secretary Yellen’s credit that in a speech at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies on April 20, she attempted to do just that. Her talk was an interesting mix: combining realism with an attempt to cling to older illusions that went, I suspect, beyond mere politeness.

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