How Trump Wields Tariffs as Negotiating Tactic and Instrument of Statecraft: Andrew Hale

Andrew Hale is a senior trade policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation. In this episode, we discuss how Trump is using various trade tools to strengthen alliances and weaken adversaries.

“I look upon what he’s trying to do as a negotiating tactic. He’s using tariffs as an instrument of statecraft, and also for economic coercion, to achieve matters that sometimes go well beyond trade policy,” Hale says.

Hale says that tariffs should be used against America’s foreign adversaries, but not necessarily against its allies.

“Among [those on] the protection side, there’s a knee jerk reaction saying a tariff is the panacea to all of our problems. And actually, a lot of these problems we created right here in Washington. And we can fix them right here in Washington, with dealing with some of the stupid and foolish regulations that we have,” he says. “What we cannot go back to is what we had during the Clinton years, what we had during the Bush years, the Obama years—which was this seamless trade with China, where we treat them as a market economy. They’re a non-market economy. They’re a foreign adversary.”

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.