If at first you fail, try to fail some more.
This could be Donald Trump’s mantra as he begins to brainstorm some economic policies to run on while managing 4 criminal indictments involving 91 charges and trying to capture the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Trump will reportedly roll out a plan to impose a new 10% tariff on all imports, as a way to raise revenue for other taxes he wants to cut. Those include the standard corporate tax rate, which Trump wants to lower from 21% to 15%, and an extension of individual tax cuts passed in 2017 that are due to expire in 2025.
Trump dubbed himself Tariff Man while imposing new duties on steel and aluminum imports in 2018. He followed that with new tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese imports that raised costs for American businesses and consumers.
Trump seethed at the large US trade deficits with China and other countries, and his tariffs were supposed to reduce the amount of US imports and improve trade deficits. Trump also negotiated deals in which China was supposed to buy more US exports, lowering the trade deficit further.