I Was Wrong About Trump’s Tariff Strategy
Is Elite Theory Bullshit?
The evening of April 1st, an editor and I were working on the finishing touches on an article about Trump’s tariff strategy. “Keep updated with what happens with the tariffs,” one late-night message read.
The next morning, Trump blew the piece to bits. He announced sweeping tariffs based on existing trade deficits — which fell predominantly on Asian and African countries.
raises the question: are Trump’s tariffs predictable, or are they just chaos?
Dean is right that critics of all trade — most prominently Peter Navarro — have influenced Trump since the first administration. At the same time, plenty of Trump’s closest allies are strongly motivated by other ideas. For example, a school of thought known as foreign policy realism has historically influenced many MAGA republicans, including Vice President JD Vance and Elbridge Colby, Trump’s nominee for Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. A core premise of the original article was that Trump and Vance were operating under a unified strategy: their “pivot to Asia” would prioritize alliances against China while pressuring Europe and North America to become more self-sufficient. Vance had outlined the former half of this strategy in his Munich speech, which was immediately followed up by a Presidential memo on Digital Sales Taxes.
So which school wins out?
For more than a decade, the intellectual right ascribed to variations of Elite Theory — the belief that intellectual and financial elites would ultimately control policy outcomes. The going theory was that better organized and institutionalized factions in any government would outcompete the disorganized ones. The right sought to build up an intellectual counter elite — in which foreign policy realists like Vice President Vance played a major role. As it turns out, many of the assumptions of elite theory are wrong in populist administrations.
When ‘Liberation Day’ came, Trump revealed tariffs that follow a completely different paradigm. He imposed tariffs of 32% on Taiwan, 24% on Japan, and 25% on South Korea, higher tariffs than the 20% he imposed on the EU. Limiting trade with Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan inverts the realist paradigm, which seeks to build up those allied countries.
With Trump’s tariffs, there’s no clear mechanism by which Trump administration factions with more thorough arguments and strategies outcompete those which do not. The realist faction had a more coherent strategy, intellectual backing, and allies in industry. None of that mattered.
To be fair, traditional parties have very clear mechanisms for elite influence — reverence for legacy institutions, sensitivity to bad press, and the economic influence of lobbyists. Nonetheless, it’s time to revise the assumptions of elite theory — especially in populist parties.
This was interesting. "For more than a decade, the intellectual right ascribed to variations of Elite Theory — the belief that intellectual and financial elites would ultimately control policy outcomes. The going theory was that better organized and institutionalized factions in any government would outcompete the disorganized ones. The right sought to build up an intellectual counter elite — in which foreign policy realists like Vice President Vance played a major role. As it turns out, many of the assumptions of elite theory are wrong in populist administrations."
I look forward to reading more about this. It sounds convergent with some of my own questions and conclusions.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/the-schism-of-the-elites
elite theory is a tad outdated
the old elite, _all of them_, are now purely automatons
the elite is AI now brian, u should know that
the mechanism setting tariffs, yes the opposite of clear, is the same AI myopically optimizing the nations debt financing
and given the problem the AI is optimizing for - the inputs, which are often outputs (sic), get a lot more interesting than tariffs
an updated theory might be called something like, the algorithmic cryptocalvinist necroeconomy