Can Donald Trump Win a Trade War?

President Donald Trump knows better than to treat the "honeymoon" a president gets in his first months of office as a time to relax. He's fighting as hard now as he did at the height of last year's campaign.

He's even started what critics call a trade war.

Every week, the White House astonishes liberals — and often conservatives, too — with dramatic actions on every front from immigration to Ukraine.

Much of the media is in a daze. Democrats are dizzied and disoriented.

The president knows how to keep his enemies, and more than a few friends, off-balance.

But there's a logic to this whirlwind of policy change: Trump knows his clock is running.

The tariffs are the biggest risk Trump is taking in domestic policy.

If this is a trade war, its stakes are existential for the administration, with the potential to cost Republicans dearly in next year's midterms and leave the GOP looking like the party of Herbert Hoover come the next presidential election.

Trump loves the very word "tariff," calling it "the most beautiful word in the dictionary."

But good economic policy calls for a cool head, and Wall Street fears the president is letting his passions set the nation on a dangerous course.

Provided there's enough competition at home, domestic production can take the place of foreign goods that are priced out of consumers' comfort zone by tariffs.

Substitution takes time, however.

And while Trump has been quick to grant delays and reprieves, the market is taking his tariffs seriously — and hard.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick went on "Meet the Press" Sunday to assure the country, "There's going to be no recession in America."

Yet the president himself said on Fox News, "I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition because what we're doing is very big. We're bringing wealth back to America."

"It takes a little time," he continued. "You can't really watch the stock market."

Americans do watch the stock market, though — just as they watch prices in the supermarket that keep rising while their investment portfolios are falling.

Inflation and a poor economy can do to Trump exactly what they did to Joe Biden.

Yet the president knows that — and, as his words show, he knows that getting out of the trap decades of globalization led America into will take a while, which is why he's starting now.

The president's gamble is that even if this slew of tariffs triggers a recession, it'll be over by the time voters cast their ballots next year.

President Ronald Reagan made a similar bet in 1981, when he and Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volcker accepted a recession risk to get inflation down and cure the economy of low-growth "stagflation."

The plan worked — but not before a recession kicked in, letting Democrats pick up 26 seats in the House of Representatives and costing Republicans one seat in the Senate.

Is that a preview of what Trump's party can expect next year?

Or will enough manufacturing and other jobs come back to America that voters will want to continue Trump's reorientation of the economy away from global trade toward more U.S. production?

Trump is hedging his bet even as he makes a big one — his winning hand is his freedom to declare victory whenever he chooses.

America's trading partners need our business at least as much as we need theirs — and in most cases, they need ours a lot more.

Trump can ask for any number of concessions — from settling fisheries disputes with Canada in America's favor to getting more foreign companies to agree to build factories here — that other governments will gladly grant to escape from the burden of tariffs.

Competition among producers within our borders can replace foreign goods more easily than foreign producers can find alternative buyers for their goods; no other nation has consumers with as much disposable income as the United States.

The countries with the next highest levels of disposable income per household are the tiny states of Luxembourg and Switzerland, with a little less than $45,000 and $40,000 per household, respectively.

American households have more than $51,000 of disposable income on average — and there are a lot more households than in other wealthy developed nations.

China can't make up the difference by selling goods to its own, far poorer citizens, or the numerous but even poorer peoples of most other developing countries.

Because Trump controls access to what every other trading nation needs, he can strike a deal any time, assuming wounded pride doesn't cause other countries — like Canada — to forget their interests.

The president's strategy, long-term and short-term, is sound — as long as he gets the timing right.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Previously:
• 03/04/25: Europe's Decline Was a Choice
• 02/25/25: How Trump Makes Europe Stronger
• 02/20/25: Tax-payers funding a sham of democracy
• 02/11/25: What Kind of a Populist Is Elon Musk?
• 02/03/25: Can Trump Win Trade Wars Before They Start?
• 01/21/25: Trump Inaugurates a New Era
• 01/14/25: Dems Aren't Democracy's Party
• 01/07/25: Donald Trump's Worldwide Election
• 12/31/24: Harmless self-deception?
• 12/17/24: Communism thriving, including HERE
• 12/10/24: Birthright Citizenship Is a Breach in the Border
• 12/03/24: Identity Politics, Not Biden, Cost Dems the Election
• 11/19/24: Why Dems Are Losing Tomorrow's Elections Today
• 11/12/24: Dems Are at a Dead End, Unless They Learn From Trump
• 10/29/24: Harris Targets Married Women
• 10/22/24: Vibes Turn Bad for Kamala Harris
• 10/15/24: Why Veterans Are Voting for Trump
• 10/08/24: How Donald Trump Can Win the Popular Vote
• 10/01/24: Iran Targets America's Elections -- and Trump
• 09/24/24: Trump's Would-Be Assassin's Explanation
• 09/17/24: When Character Assassination Becomes the Real Thing
• 09/10/24: Kamala Harris Runs Like a Republican -- and Misleads
• 09/04/24: Where Trump Is Moderate -- While Kam Is Maximalist
• 08/27/24: Donald Trump Is Reagan's Heir
• 08/20/24: Will Voters Settle for Joe Biden's Wing(wo)man?
• 08/13/24: Trump Has to Run Like It's 2016 Again
• 08/07/24: Is Trump Running Against Harris -- or Donald Trump?
• 07/30/24: Kamala Harris' 'Mean Girls' Election
• 07/23/24: Kamala Harris Is the Opponent Donald Trump Wants
• 07/16/24: Ready for Biden's Counterattack?
• 07/09/24: Biden Faces Richard Nixon's Choice
• 07/02/24: Should Biden Drop Out -- or Resign?
• 06/18/24: Separate Sexual Identity and State
• 06/18/24: Nigel Farage Makes the Trump Moment Permanent
• 06/04/24: State that's long eluded GOP turns toward Trump
• 05/21/24: Trump's Sun Belt Hopes and Rust Belt Needs
• 05/14/24: What Trump Sees in Doug Burgum
• 05/07/24: The Vietnam Era Never Ended for Biden's Party
• 05/06/24: Nationalists of the World, Unite?
• 04/25/24: Foreign Policy Splits
• 04/16/24: How pro-lifers stand to lose everything gained in overturning Roe
• 04/02/24: PBS Misremembers William F. Buckley Jr.
• 04/02/24: Who Wants to Be House Speaker?
• 03/26/24: Trump Hunts for a VP Close to Home
• 03/19/24: Princess Kate and Democracy's Discontents
• 03/12/24: Can Biden Buy the Voters?
• 03/05/24: Veepstakes Give Trump an Edge
• 02/20/24: Do Americans Trust Either Party?
• 02/13/24: Vladimir Putin -- A Passive Aggressor
• 01/23/24: Will 'Lawfare' Take Trump Off the Ballot?
• 01/16/24: Will Africa Save America?
• 01/09/24:'The Sopranos' at 25: A new world tragedy
• 01/02/24: Trump, Biden and a Fight for the Heart
• 12/12/23: What Happened to Ron DeSantis?
• 12/12/23: Biden Looks Doomed -- But Is He?
• 12/05/23: A Test for Trump and His Rivals
• 11/21/23: When Inequality Is Fatal for Men
• 11/14/23: Nevermind, The Battle's Over
• 11/07/23: War in the Dem Party -- and at the Opera
• 10/24/23: Israel's Lesson for 2024: A Lib Crackup
• 10/17/23: Libs' Dilemma: Immigration or Israel?
• 10/10/23: Why Bidenflation Defines Bidenomics
• 10/03/23: Will Gavin Newsom Copy Trump?
• 09/26/23: Biden's a Loser -- but Dems Can't Ditch Him
• 09/19/23: Do Sex Scandals Matter?
• 09/12/23: Cornel West Spells Doom for Biden
• 09/05/23: What Trump Does for Democracy
• 08/2/23: Ramaswamy: A Trump Versus Trump?
• 08/22/23: Take 'Rich Men North of Richmond' Seriously
• 08/16/23: How America Kills Its Own
• 08/08/23: The Biden Pardon That Can Spare America
• 08/01/23: Harding, a consevative for the ages
• 07/25/23: Demography Destiny, for Us and China
• 07/18/23: The Frontrunner Who Looks Like a Loser Is Biden
• 07/11/23: Britain's Bad Example for American Conservatives
• 07/05/23: Could We Still Win a Revolutionary War?
• 06/27/23: Civilizations Clash -- in Ukraine and at Home
• 06/20/23: China Comes for the Caribbean
• 06/13/23: Fertility, Family and Bio-Socialism
• 06/06/23: From American Dream to Orwell's Nightmare
• 05/23/23: Ukraine war is an existential struggle --- for the West
• 05/23/23: Learn the Right Midterm Lessons -- or Lose in 2024
• 05/16/23: Feinstein Today Is Biden Tomorrow
• 05/09/23: Trump, DeSantis and Political Courtship
• 05/02/23: RFK Jr.'s Threat to Biden
• 04/25/23: Biden's Lost Generation
• 04/25/23: Who's In Charge of Clarence Thomas?
• 04/11/23: Beyond AI, Our Cyborg Future
• 04/04/23: 2024: 3 Leaders, 1 Way to Win
• 03/28/23: Climate Science Makes a Bad Religion
• 03/21/23: All the Conspiracy That's Fit to Print