With his tax agenda finally passed, Donald Trump has turned back to his true passion: making America poorer and more geopolitically isolated for no good reason.

Last week, the president threatened 25 of America’s trading partners with punishing tariffs, unless they present him with an agreeable trade deal by August 1. These represent a modified version of the levies that Trump unveiled back in April and then delayed shortly after.

He separately imposed levies on various other foreign goods, including fresh Mexican tomatoes, which went into effect this week. America’s average tariff rate now sits at 20.6 percent, its highest level since 1910.

All these taxes on foreign imports are already pushing up costs for US consumers: The prices of home furnishings jumped 1 percent in June, while those of appliances rose 1.9 percent, far outpacing the costs of goods unimpacted by Trump’s tariffs. Meanwhile, core US allies have begun contemplating the formation of an adversarial economic bloc.

The president ostensibly believes that his tariffs’ benefits will outweigh these harms. But this conviction rests less on reasoned thought than whimsical intuition.

Indeed, rebutting Trump’s theory of trade can feel a bit like refuting a child’s supposition that the moon is made of cheese. It isn’t hard to find reasons for doubting that the night sky is lit by a ball of mozzarella. But there are so many problems with that notion — astronomical, agricultural, and otherwise — that it’s difficult to know where to begin.

The president’s trade agenda is similarly premised on a vast array of misunderstandings.

For one, Trump contends that anytime the United States runs a trade deficit with another country, our nation becomes poorer. In his mind, if we buy more stuff from Cambodia than it purchases from us, then we’ve lost money on that relationship, which means that we’ve been ripped off. But this is silly. Money is desirable because it can be........

© Vox