Workers on the job at Steelcon, a structural steel design and fabrication company, in St. Catharines, Ont., on Jan. 31, 2025.Carlos Osorio/Reuters
So now it’s a 25-per-cent tariff on steel and aluminum coming into the United States. Something new from Donald Trump?
No – something completely in character for the American President in his second term. Indeed, the new governing strategy for the Trump years is increasingly coming into sharp focus.
It is one part economic theory (tariffs bring in money to support tax cuts), one part bullying strong-arm tactics (pressure to win concessions at the borders and on fentanyl traffic) and one part style (keep everyone on edge).
It’s the latter – the uncertainty, both at home and abroad – that increasingly is emerging as the principal element.
In that, Mr. Trump is an entirely different kind of president – but for a different reason than usually stipulated.
Yes, he is a non-politician in the ultimate political office. Yes, he is a conservative with a new conception of what it means to be on the right. Yes, he combines self-regard with self-interest. We knew all those things during his first term.
U.S. President Donald Trump listens during a news conference in the East Room of the White House, in Washington, on Feb. 7.Alex Brandon/The Associated Press
But in the first several weeks of Trump 2.0, a recessive gene in the President’s personality is coming to the fore. He first saw disruption as a goal. He still does. But now he also is using disruption as a tactic.
Ordinarily the theory would be that the world’s dominant power – the country with the greatest military along with the strongest consumer market – would be the ultimate sentinel of stability. Great powers ordinarily avoid wrenching change. If they are on top, they have a stake in the status quo, for they have mastered it. Dramatic change risks a dramatic overhaul in the world order. That can only be trouble for those at the commanding heights.
In the old days, General Motors, General Electric and General Mills liked the way things were. They innovated, to be sure – new automobile models, better refrigerators, new lines of cereal. But they innovated to remain the same: on top. They wanted to dominate the market, not to shake it up.
Mr. Trump now is all about shaking things up.
In a way, this shouldn’t be startling. If your motto is “Make America Great Again,” you are implicitly saying that the country with the greatest hard and soft power on the face of the Earth – in the history of the planet – isn’t great right now. (It was Hillary Rodham Clinton who, in 2016, was arguing that America already was great. The country bought the line – she won the popular vote – but Mr. Trump won the election, and the forum to dominate American politics for a decade.)
So if, as Mr. Trump is arguing, America isn’t great right now, then it follows (at least in his mind and those of his allies in the White House, on Capitol Hill and in the think tanks that have been churning out many of his moves in the first breath of his second term) that the status quo and its handmaiden, stability, just won’t do.
Last week’s game of chicken on imports from Canada and Mexico was a prelude. The tariffs were on. Then maybe they were negotiable. Then they were off. But the threat remained. And now: steel and aluminum, with a heavy burden on Canadian exports.
Canada is on edge. Countries receiving American foreign aid are on edge. Democrats unsure of how to respond are on edge. Courts handling dozens of legal challenges – soon to be scores of new suits – are on edge. Corporations are on edge. People needing vaccines are on edge. Universities are on edge. On Monday morning, the University of Pittsburgh distributed a summary of the impact of targeted budget cuts that will injure, if not devastate, its medical research arm. It is not alone.
The subtext of “Make America Great Again” is “Make Everyone Unsure For a While."
The president whose various personality traits most often are compared to Mr. Trump’s is Richard Nixon. Both stretched the limits of constitutional government. Both battled the press. Both saw themselves as battling against a hostile political environment. Both reconstituted the Republican Party: Mr. Nixon with his outreach to (and success with) the once-Democratic South and Mr. Trump with his conquest of the GOP establishment. Both faced impeachment efforts, though Mr. Nixon resigned before certain congressional action to remove him from office.
But there is a substantial difference between Mr. Trump and Mr. Nixon.
President Richard Nixon in the Oval office February 19, 1970 in Washington, D.C.National Archives/Getty Images
Mr. Nixon was the quintessential political figure of his time: a veteran of the Second World War, a young member of the House of Representatives who made a swift move to the Senate, then vice-president to the ultimate elder figure of his time (Dwight Eisenhower), finally a three-time presidential nominee. Mr. Trump – with no military experience, no political experience, no approbation from the Republican establishment – does not compare.
He came in as a disrupter without peer; the earlier rebel Republican presidential candidate of modern time was Barry Goldwater, who at least had been a member of the Phoenix City Council before moving to the Senate, where he served for a dozen years before winning the 1964 Republican nomination.
Mr. Trump’s swift ascendancy brought to mind the conversation between vice-president Lyndon Johnson and House Speaker Sam Rayburn after Mr. Johnson met some of the people, many from university endowed chairs, who were filling out the new John F. Kennedy administration in 1961. Mr. Rayburn’s response to his protégé‘s description of their impressive credentials: “Well, Lyndon, everything you say may be true, but I’d feel a whole lot better if one of them had ever run for sheriff.”
Mr. Trump never ran for sheriff, nor for anything else. He does not have a stake in the political order that all of his predecessors possessed, all of them having prospered from the status quo that Mr. Trump reviles – and is determined to topple. Uncertainties “R” Us. It’s the President’s modus operandi, and the description of our times.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday he will introduce new 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports into the U.S., on top of existing metals duties, in another major escalation of his trade policy overhaul. Gabe Singer reports.
Reuters