Donald Trump’s announcement on Monday night that he would slap 25 percent tariffs on goods imported from Canada and Mexico was in many ways a classic Trump play.
The president-elect’s Truth Social post offered plenty of bombast and chest-pounding but little guidance on how those tariffs would work — likely because Trump hasn’t thought that far ahead. But the post did succeed in putting Trump back at the top of the headlines as cable news outlets and social media pundits raced to offer breathless coverage of Trump’s latest scheme.
Our collective experience with Trump’s first term means the media should be asking a question it once again failed to broach: What if Trump is just making it all up?
As with his healthcare plan (promised “in the next week or so” back in September 2020) and infrastructure reform (promised on seven separate occasions), there’s a good chance Trump’s tariff threat is more hot air from a politician who specializes in over-promising and under-delivering.
Naturally, Trump’s statement includes enough wiggle room to justify never actually implementing his threatened tariffs. In his post, Trump claimed the tariffs would remain until Canada and Mexico jointly cut off the flow of fentanyl........