The Times Opinion columnist discusses what he thinks Trump — and American policymakers — misunderstand about China in the escalating trade war.
This is an edited transcript of an episode of “The Ezra Klein Show.” You can listen to the conversation by following or subscribing to the show on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
This episode contains strong language.
Here’s a simple principle that I believe deeply: You cannot make a good argument for a bad policy. You cannot make a coherent argument for an incoherent policy.
You can imagine tariff regimes that are defensible. You can imagine critiques of the previous era of global trade that are coherent. The problem is none of them fit what President Donald Trump is actually doing.
It’s darkly funny watching Trump’s defenders pivot online from defending the morning’s tariffs as necessary shock therapy for an economy that has been corrupted by decadence and greed for an economy where we care about the markets but have abandoned the Midwest — only to shift by that afternoon to how brilliant it was for Trump to pause those very same tariffs: Just look at that stock market recovery. Brilliant stuff, sir. Textbook “The Art of the Deal.”
Where we are right now, as I write this on Monday, April 14, is an all-out trade war with China. We’ve also laid tariffs on the rest of the world — but the big ones are on China. The tariffs there are well over a hundred percent.
We’re being told this is all necessary because we need to bring those supply chains back from China, particularly the advanced ones: They built their economy and power on the backs of our iPhones, our batteries, our semiconductors. We need all of that back.
