Tariffs will have little effect on the U.S. trade deficit
Other critics have said flat out that the tariff will do nothing to reduce the U.S. trade deficit. The Bloomberg editorial board put it bluntly earlier this week: “There’s no need for this reckless unilateralism,” the editors wrote. “The Trump administration’s theory of trade is fundamentally wrong. It sees bilateral trade imbalances as evidence of unfair practices. In fact, in a world without tariffs or trade barriers of any kind, a roughly similar pattern of surpluses and deficits would still arise, as a result of macroeconomic imbalances and other factors. There’s no polite way to say this: Trump’s goal of smaller deficits through better deals is simply delusional.”