DANIEL MCCARTHY: Trump’s Trade Lesson For Economists

If America is in a trade war, the question to ask is, are we tired of winning yet?

“Donald Trump reaps $50bn tariff haul as world ‘chickens out,’” reads the Financial Times headline.

“Only China and Canada have retaliated against US president’s tariff war,” FT’s subhead adds.

“In the Trump-dominated global economy, the U.S. gets plenty but gives nothing in return,” reads a rueful post on X from Axios — another publication with an upmarket readership — promoting an article titled “Trump trade deals prove access to the U.S. still matters above all else.”

Populist publications have a different take:

“Trump’s trade deal bloc — let’s call it The Free World,” writes Breitbart’s John Carney on X, includes “57% of global GDP,” “40% of total global trade in goods” and “18% of the world’s population.”

The president has only been back in office six months. His tariffs haven’t even been in place that long, but already the results are undeniable.

At a time when there otherwise seems no end to federal deficits, Trump’s trade policy put the federal government in the black for the month of June, with an unexpected $27 billion surplus — and, as it happens, about $27 billion in tariff revenue.

It’s one thing that President Trump so often surprises political opponents who underestimate him at election time and don’t understand his appeal.

What’s more remarkable is Trump seems to defy the very laws of economics — or rather, the law as laid down by economists.

Other social sciences have lately lost credibility thanks to a “republication crisis” that shows how the results reported in leading journals all too often fail to be repeated when experiments are conducted afresh and data are re-examined.