I can help with that Rob.

Trump has been complaining that the US has been taken advantage of in trade for decades.
He's on video record with that.

There are two reasons for the tariffs now that he is back in office.

1) The flow of drugs in from Canada is an issue.
2) The more important issue is the overall condition of the US economy which is debt burdened and also burdened by parasitic one-sided trade relationships with trading partners around the entire world. Great for them, not for the US...which is the prize market.

Almost all politicians are corporate styled scheemers. They beg donors for money, talk tough until elected and then play-the-game to advantage in office. They get in office with the main goal of sustaining power, prestige and limousine rides. The big players make big bucks giving speeches, book deals, setting up foundations and sending their relatives around the world to bag money. Imagine the frustration and resentment of a narcissist with an ego the size of Alaska having to beg some capricious overlord for money. The narcissist wants to be that overlord. e.g. Hillary Clinton et al.

They look away as a mfg plant in Ohio gets sold out to Chinese or other global interests, (or as the Chinese exercise outsized influence at the Panama Canal.) That has been standard for decades. All the while talking about "the great American worker" and "bringing jobs back to America."
Trump is not one of those politicians.

You and John are so concerned with the integrity of treaties. How about the Panama Canal treaties?
Only Trump would ever cry Bullsh+t on that....also.


Trump's intention from the jump has been to look at the totality of America's economic condition and overhaul it, bringing it more into alignment with the lives and benefit of Americans. His conclusions, return to tariffs and match everyone else's tariffs. Discourage the purchase of imports in favor of domestic made products. Build back industries. Reverse the globalism.

You can always say, "what about that or that or that?"
It's going to be bumpy and rocky.
But the alternative was Kamala Harris.