What does victory look like in the tariff wars?

If you ask Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, it’s already happening. “More than 50 countries have approached … the administration about lowering their nontariff trade barriers, lowering their tariffs, stopping currency manipulation,” he said Sunday.

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett sounded a similar note, suggesting that the gain from short-term pain for Americans will be, essentially, Milton Friedman’s ideal world in which goods move about the globe unrestricted.

In this version, a shock to markets is followed by a cut in interest rates by the Federal Reserve to stave off a recession, speedy passage of another round of tax cuts in Congress and rapid-fire trade negotiations that end up with, essentially, frictionless commerce with all of America’s major trading partners — the kind of world Elon Musk described in his wish for a free-trade zone with Europe.

Instead of “never let a crisis go to waste,” it’s a self-inflicted crisis to achieve otherwise unattainable policy goals.

That would obviously be an extraordinarily risky political move. If anything went wrong on the timing of negotiations, tax cuts, or rates or some exogenous event occurred,........

© The Hill