The steel and aluminum tariffs that Donald Trump announced (that he would soon formally announce) on Thursday were a true ambush of much of his staff, according to an NBC News report. And not just an ambush, but an ambush in the middle of a sustained temper tantrum.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross arranged for the industry executives with whom Trump met and didn’t give their names to White House staff for vetting, or even to the Secret Service for security purposes. No formal policy on the tariffs had been drafted, no diplomacy had been conducted with trading partners, and there was no message ready to go out to the press. Even by Trump standards, this seems extreme—but then, Trump was in an extreme place:
On Wednesday evening, the president became "unglued," in the words of one official familiar with the president's state of mind.
Tariffs can be wielded effectively—but that's not what Trump is doing here. He’s jamming together two-plus years of campaign speech bluster and a few weeks of building rage and turning that into policy (assuming he follows through). And bluster and rage don’t make for good policy, to say the least. Trump isn’t just provoking China, here: he’s got the European Union, generally a U.S. ally, threatening tariffs on iconic American products.
Taking steps to strengthen the American steel and aluminum industries could be a good move, if done carefully and multilaterally. But done the Trump way? He’s setting up a disaster.