Trump is doing what he set out to do
He is not ending global trade by American companies. To the contrary, the President is diligently setting policy to increase trade on an international basis.
No one ever suggested ending global trade.
It appears that Trump is striving for reciprocal trade which would be an improvement. Trump also has an objective to bring manufacturing back and rebuild America’s industries.
So if other countries don’t reciprocate, then the tariffs go into effect and stay in effect and Trump achieves bringing industries back.
If the other countries are smart and reciprocate and eliminate the trade deficits, then America does benefit, but the job of rebuilding industries becomes a little harder. Trump will find a way.
I suspect that putting up steel and aluminum tariffs first was very carefully thought out plan.
The democrats can’t complain much without looking like hypocrites, since Obama did the same thing. It rewards the industrial belt for switching sides. And it’s a key source for many of the other industries.
He’s using that as a lever to negotiate the greater trade picture. And anyone who slaps retaliatory tariffs on us on anything other than steel, while running a large deficit, gives Trump a reason to put other tariffs into effect.
No it’s not the restoration of the general import tariffs, that I would like to see. But with a hostile, sold out Congress that would be very hard politically to accomplish directly, and Trump definitely has us moving in the right direction.