Conservative Think Tank Head Blasts Trump Tariffs: ‘Doesn’t Make a Whole Lot of Sense’

Conservative economist Michael Strain believes President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariff plan “doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

Strain — the director of Economic Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute — joined Mediaite founder Dan Abrams for an in-depth discussion on Trump’s plan on The Dan Abrams Show. During their conversation, Strain explained his issues with the economic policy and the messaging coming from the Trump administration.

Like many other experts, Strain agreed that prices will go up as a result of Trump’s plan to impose tariffs with virtually all U.S. trade parters. Even before the president revealed the plan in full on “Liberation Day,” he repeatedly insisted that would not be the case.

“So, some some goods to which tariffs are going to be applied are like cigarettes,” Strain told Abrams, “where people in America really need the good that’s being imported, and the people they’re buying that good from — the companies they’re buying that good from — know that and they’re able to pass along the burden of the tariff. Other goods are going to be closer to President Trump’s hope, where either the foreign seller is going to bear a lot of the burden of the tariff, or the domestic is going to be a lot of the burden of the tariff.

“But again, the kind of key point here is that consumer prices are going to go up, and the prices facing businesses who import parts and supplies are going to go up. They may not go up in every instance; they may not go up the full amount of the tariff; but they’re going to go up.”

Later in the conversation, Strain did agree with Trump’s plan to be tougher on China economically. The tariffs applied to allies like the European Union and Canada, however, make little sense to him.

So put China aside. If you look at the nations that we’ve targeted here — you know, Canada and Mexico, Japan, the EU, the UK — these are nations that had very low tariff rates on U.S. imports. There are nations to which the U.S. applied — until a couple months ago — nations to which the U.S. applied a very low tariff rate. And so, there is no situation where some country is charging us a 20% tariff and we’re charging them a 2% tariff — at least among our major trading partners and where there’s some huge need to to correct the situation. It’s a separate question, and we probably don’t have time to go into it about whether it would make sense even in that case. So in cases that were charging a 20% tariff, should we raise our tariff rate to match that? I don’t think we should, but that’s a separate question.

I do think China is its own thing, and China is a bad actor in global commerce. China breaks all sorts of rules. They steal all sorts of business practices and information; and so maybe we want to do something aggressive on China. But the EU, Canada, Japan, the UK, this just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.