Can Tariffs Be Defended? Apparently Yes.

Whether we like it or not, Trump can already claim a pre-emptive policy victory.

Photo by Ian Taylor on Unsplash

In my new Washington Post column [free link], I spoke at length to Oren Cass, one of the country’s most prominent and articulate defenders of rebalancing trade by way of tariffs. For him, the most relevant metric is domestic manufacturing and re-industrialization. If that’s what you really care about, then tariffs will almost certainly get you closer to where you want to be than their absence. The question, then, will be: was it worth it? And that’s not an economic question as much as it is a political one.