Donald Trump has incoherent and unhinged beliefs about trade policy.

He also has a penchant for pretending to be a “crazy guy” for the sake of increasing his leverage in negotiations.

This made it difficult to tell whether his proposal for an across-the-board 25 percent tariff on Canadian and Mexican imports was sincere. That policy was supposed to take effect Tuesday. But a flurry of last-minute diplomacy on Monday yielded agreements that postponed the onset of the tariffs for 30 days, while the US and its neighbors worked on shoring up security along America’s northern and southern borders.

In exchange for the delay of these tariffs, the Mexican government agreed to send 10,000 national guard troops to its northern border while Trump vowed to stem the flow of American firearms into Mexico. Canada, meanwhile, pledged to implement its 1.3 billion border security plan (which it had already enacted in December). Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he was “very pleased with this initial outcome, and the Tariffs announced on Saturday will be paused for a 30 day period to see whether or not a final Economic deal with Canada can be structured.”

For now, it looks like Trump’s avowed desire to upend North American trade — if not to coerce Canada into becoming a US state — was more negotiating ploy than agenda. Or at least, it appears that Trump was not sufficiently committed to that agenda to stick by it, even in the face of overwhelming industry opposition.

This said, Trump did not withdraw his proposed tariffs — he only shelved them for one month. There is a strong case for thinking that those tariffs will never take effect. But there is also some reason to fear that he might revive his plans for a North American trade war, if perhaps in more modest form.

Why Trump’s 25 percent tariffs will (probably) never take effect

There are at least three reasons to think that Trump will delay his 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico indefinitely:

• Trump’s proposed tariffs would benefit virtually no one, while imposing steep costs on US consumers and manufacturers alike.
• The Trump administration had explicitly framed these tariffs as a tactic for extracting narrow concessions from Mexico and Canada, rather than a strategy for economic reform.
• During his first term, Trump repeatedly threatened to enact massive tariffs, only to back down after concessions from America’s trade partners.

The economic consequences of Trump’s tariffs would be punishing. Altogether, his newly proposed duties would cost the typical US household more than $1,200 a year, according to an analysis from the Peterson Institute of International Economics. And this de facto tax increase would be regressive, burdening lower-income households more than wealthy ones, as the former spend a greater share of their incomes on foreign consumer goods.

Economic........

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