Weekly Perspective

  An Economic War Based on Lies The president just launched a major worldwide economic war for no real reason, and he and his allies cooked up bogus numbers to justify their unprovoked aggression. Daniel Larison Apr 3           Trump’s massive escalation of his trade war was  far worse  than expected. The president just launched a major worldwide economic war for no real reason, and he and his allies cooked up bogus numbers to justify their unprovoked aggression. It is an economic war  based on lies . Many news reports have referred to these tariffs as reciprocal because that is what the administration calls them, but there is nothing reciprocal about any of this. The countries targeted with significantly higher tariffs have generally low tariffs on American goods. Trump’s trade war is as far from tariff reciprocity as it is possible to get. The president has arbitrarily imposed one of the largest tax increases in American history. As America...