A Case for Trump's Tariff Trade Policy (and for Australia Too), By Chris Knight (Florida)

Donald Trump's trade policy, particularly his unapologetic use of tariffs, is among the most controversial and misunderstood aspects of his presidency. Critics call it protectionist, economically reckless, and outdated. Yet from another vantage point, one rooted in strategic realism, economic self-determination, and the interests of domestic labour, Trump's tariff policy is not only defensible but necessary. It marked a sharp pivot away from decades of globalist orthodoxy and toward a nationalist economic agenda designed to reassert American leverage in an increasingly predatory global marketplace. And it gives a model for other globalist enslaved countries like Australia.

For decades, the United States tolerated enormous trade deficits, importing far more than it exported, especially from countries that undercut U.S. industries with state subsidies, low labour standards, and unfair trade practices. The most egregious of these, in Trump's view, was China. The assumption of the post-Cold War era, that integrating China into the global trading system would liberalise it economically and politically, was exposed as naive. Instead, China's rise came at the cost of millions of American and Australian manufacturing jobs and the erosion of entire industrial regions. Trump's tariffs were a direct response to this dynamic, not an economic tantrum, but a calculated attempt to rebalance the terms of trade.

Tariffs were used as a tool of leverage, not as an end in themselves. By raising the cost of Chinese imports, Trump applied pressure on Beijing to come to the negotiating table, resulting in the "Phase One" trade deal. That agreement compelled China to commit to increased purchases of U.S. goods, particularly agricultural products, offering relief to American farmers who had long operated under the heel of Chinese market manipulation. For a political class that had long deferred to multilateral bodies like the WTO, Trump's bilateral approach, fortified by tariff pressure, proved remarkably effective in eliciting concessions.

More than a negotiating tool, tariffs were also a statement of principle: that the United States should not rely on adversarial regimes for critical goods and services. The Covid-19 plandemic would later validate this concern. The fragility of global supply chains, so long touted as the epitome of economic efficiency, was laid bare. American dependency on Chinese-made pharmaceuticals, PPE, and electronics suddenly looked not just imprudent but dangerous. In this context, Trump's earlier efforts to restore domestic manufacturing capacity and bring strategic industries back onshore took on a prescient quality.

Critics, of course, pointed to higher consumer prices as a cost of the tariffs, and there is some truth to that. Certain goods did become more expensive in the short term. But Trump's defence was rooted in a longer-term strategic calculus. If the price of socks or microwaves increased by a few dollars, but the country regained its industrial base, reduced its dependency on hostile regimes, and created sustainable middle-class jobs, was that not a trade worth making?

Moreover, Trump's tariffs redefined the Republican Party's relationship to labour. Traditionally the party of free markets and big business, the GOP under Trump adopted a more populist posture, appealing to workers in the Midwest and the industrial heartland who had long borne the brunt of globalisation. Tariffs offered more than economic insulation, they offered symbolic recognition. They told blue-collar Americans that their livelihoods were worth defending, that their industries mattered, and that the government would no longer turn a blind eye to the gutting of entire towns in the name of cheap imports and corporate profit.

Of course, the policy did not unfold in a legal vacuum. Trump's use of tariffs, especially under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (on national security grounds) and Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 (to counter unfair trade practices), was repeatedly challenged, domestically and internationally. Critics argued that the national security justification was a pretext, an abuse of executive power to circumvent Congress and sidestep U.S. obligations under the World Trade Organisation.

Yet these legal challenges raise a deeper question: who controls American trade policy, and by what standards? U.S. law gives the president significant discretion to impose tariffs in the name of national security or to respond to discriminatory trade practices. Trump's team understood this and exploited the flexibility within existing legislation. The courts, while sometimes sceptical, largely upheld the administration's actions. In American Institute for International Steel v. United States, for example, a challenge to Section 232 tariffs on steel was dismissed, with the Supreme Court declining to hear the appeal. The precedent, set decades earlier, gave the executive broad leeway to determine what constituted a national security threat.

Internationally, the WTO did rule against some of Trump's tariffs, particularly those levied against China. But that only underscored a longstanding critique of the organisation: it lacks meaningful enforcement powers and operates on assumptions of economic harmony that no longer reflect geopolitical reality. The United States, as the largest economy and funder of the global order, is not bound to comply with every WTO ruling, particularly when that order is being subverted by states like China that exploit loopholes and flout the very norms the WTO is supposed to uphold. In this light, ignoring or reforming WTO constraints is not lawlessness; it is leadership.

Ultimately, legal challenges to Trump's tariffs often missed the point. The real battle was not over technical compliance with trade norms but over the legitimacy of a trade policy rooted in national sovereignty. Trump reframed trade not as a sacrosanct arena of rules-based liberalism, but as a contest of interests. And in doing so, he challenged the assumption that American trade strategy should always defer to global institutions whose track record of defending U.S. interests is, at best, mixed.

In the end, Trump's tariffs forced a reckoning. They exposed the fragility of America's economic assumptions, challenged the sanctity of free trade dogma, and brought the issue of national economic resilience back into the centre of public debate. Whether one agrees with the method or not, the message was impossible to ignore: America should trade from a position of strength, not dependence, and it should never outsource that strength to courts or councils whose loyalty lies elsewhere.

The same reasoning applies even more so to weaker, more globalist submissive Western countries, whose traitorous "useful idiot" elites are part of the Chinese communist regime, and no doubt rewarded handsomely with their Judas silver.