Richard Nixon ended the Gold Standard, Bill Clinton ratified NAFTA, and Donald Trump – no less ambitious in his aims – today announced a series of sweeping retaliatory tariffs designed to reorder the global trade system established in the wake of the Second World War.

The president began with a picture of American carnage in the Rose Garden and repeated the theme of his decade in politics. He said that the country had been “looted, pillaged, raped, and plundered” by trading partners, both adversaries and allies alike. “Taxpayers have been ripped off for more than 50 years,” he told a crowd at the White House that included members of his Cabinet and union members in hard hats. “But it is not going to happen anymore.”

Then the color-coded chart, a bet that tariffs will deliver, and ultimately, the legacy of his second term.

The Trump administration will impose a 10% tariff across the board on all imports, but even higher individual rates for those nations that his administration deems particularly unfair in their trade practices toward the United States. He had promised previously that reciprocal was a literal term. “Whatever they charge us,” Trump said in February of the coming trade policy, “we will charge them.” Before the event, a senior White House official explained the new arithmetic, telling reporters, “Because the president is lenient and kind to the world, we’re only charging half.”

Trump unveiled the new rates, calculated not just from the tariffs other nations have imposed on U.S. goods but also currency manipulation and other trade barriers, on the blue, white, and yellow chart that sent stock market futures on Wall Street tumbling.

No one, not adversaries or even allies, was spared. Because China imposed tariffs of 67%, the U.S. will........

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