On the campaign trail, presidential candidate Donald Trump often slammed American leaders for publicly telegraphing their ISIS strategy. “Whatever happened to the element of surprise, OK? We announce we’re going after Mosul,” he said during the last debate with his opponent. “I have been reading about going after Mosul now for about — how long is it, Hillary, three months? These people have all left. They’ve all left. The element of surprise.”
The Element of Surprise Is a Bad Strategy for a Trade War
Trump is not the first American president to impose some sort of tariffs. But American business has gotten used to trade protection that arises in an orderly fashion. The United States has pushed the world to accept a system where protection arises after trade investigations, where the government looks into a trading partner’s adherence to globally-accepted rules. But past investigations have begun with a critical feature: publicly identifying product lists and country targets that might be subject to tariffs at the beginning of the case, nine-to-twelve-months before tariffs would be imposed. This gave time not only for the public to weigh in – to potentially alter the scope of the protection – but for businesses and workers to make contingency plans if tariffs were ultimately enacted. Trump’s strategy is different. For one, he is not waiting for industries to request protection. He is imposing it himself, wanted or not. And he is doing so under little-used U.S. trade laws that allow him greater secrecy and authority than America is used to. Under these laws, Trump gets to decide what products and countries are hit with protection, when they are hit, and when the public is to be told the details.