Media coverage of Trump’s tariffs has grown more skeptical – but not nearly skeptical enough

The tariffs are not the product of serious policymaking. They are the irrational and capricious result of Trump’s delusional thinking.

(I'm on vacation next week.)

I’ll start with the good news: By and large, the mainstream media is no longer letting Trump get away with calling his new slate of tariffs “reciprocal” -- when there’s nothing vaguely reciprocal about them. They are unilateral, and arbitrary, and massive.

Also good news: Many journalists are expressing skepticism about the devastating effect these tariffs are likely to have on both the global and domestic economies.

The bad news is that even the most skeptical coverage still treats the tariffs like some sort of serious, if flawed, policy move by Trump -- when in fact they are the irrational and capricious product of Trump’s delusional thinking.

And some outlets are actually hailing Trump as victorious, and trumpeting his vindication over pessimistic economists.

Krugman’s View

Nobel Prize-winning economist and newsletter writer Paul Krugman brilliantly explained why the media is blowing this story in a conversation with Greg Sargent of the New Republic earlier this week:

[T]o say that the president of the U.S. is making drastic policy changes in order to cure a problem that only exists in his imagination, that’s a very difficult -- that sounds unbalanced. That sounds like you’re shilling for the Democrats, when it’s in fact just reporting the flat truth.

Krugman continued:

And so I think the media organizations have still not figured out how to deal with that. The fact of the matter is that Trump’s whole trade war is based upon a deluded version of how the world economy works. But aside from the fact that the Trump administration may try to punish your organization if you report that, it also just runs very counter to the “people want to sound objective.” And unfortunately, again, it’s the old Stephen Colbert line, “Reality has a well-known liberal bias.” If you report what’s really happening, it sounds liberal.

In his own newsletter, Krugman wrote:

Trump has destroyed the international trading system and brought back Smoot-Hawley-level tariffs based on the assertion that other countries are taking advantage of us and blocking our exports, which is pure fantasy.

And he concluded:

[N]o, Trump isn’t winning his trade war — except, possibly, in the media, which have apparently decided that shooting yourself in the foot and not facing retaliation is a victory.

How It’s Playing

When it comes to skepticism, the Washington Post has been an outlier, going so far as to hail Trump’s victory.

This morning’s analysis by David J. Lynch was positively gushing:

After a rough start, President Donald Trump’s campaign to reshape global trade suddenly seems to be advancing from strength to strength.

He continued:

Economists who warned this past spring that Trump was courting renewed inflation, recession and collapsing supply chains look like false prophets.

It wasn’t until ten paragraphs in that Lynch noted that the tariffs face a legal challenge, that there are discrepancies about what other countries have agreed to, and that there are in fact signs that tariffs are sapping the economy already.

The New York Times has been considerably more skeptical – or should I say realistic?

A Times article by Ana Swanson on Tuesday admittedly gave Trump credit in the headline for “winning his trade war,” but came with a number of caveats:

While the president’s plan for global trade now looks like a political victory, whether it will be an economic success remains much more debatable…

[M]any economists continue to predict that Mr. Trump’s tariffs will result in higher prices both for businesses that import products and for the consumers who buy them. They expect that to slow the economy and backfire, at least somewhat, on the president’s efforts to rev up manufacturing.

This morning’s lead story by Swanson and Tony Romm used tough language from the get-go:

President Trump unveiled a battery of new tariffs on Thursday targeting exports from dozens of U.S. trading partners, as he followed through with a disruptive plan to remake global trade.

Trump, they wrote, “is introducing a trading system of his own imagining, one that is much more protectionist and isolationist than before.”

They quoted Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell University, calling it “a dark day in the annals of global trade integration, which was once seen as having so much promise in bringing countries together around a vision of shared prosperity.”

And the Times has had some highly critical stories over the last several months.

Jeanna Smialek and Swanson wrote an analysis on July 11 headlined “As Trump Sows Tariff Confusion, Rules of Global Commerce Give Way to Chaos.” Their lead:

Six months into his new administration, President Trump’s assault on global trade has lost any semblance of organization or structure.

They explained:

He has changed deadlines suddenly. He has blown up negotiations at the 11th hour, often raising unexpected issues. He has tied his tariffs to complaints that have nothing to do with trade, like Brazil’s treatment of its former president, Jair Bolsonaro, or the flow of fentanyl from Canada.

And they concluded:

The resulting uncertainty is preventing companies and countries from making plans as the rules of global commerce give way to a state of chaos.

David E. Sanger in March came close to capturing the lunacy when he took note of “the punish-by-whim nature of the second Trump presidency.” He wrote:

Indeed, it appears that Mr. Trump is having enormous fun turning tariffs on and off like tap water. But others are developing a case of Trump-induced whiplash, not least investors.

Over at the Associated Press, Josh Boak started his report this morning by noting that Trump busted his own deadline, then wrote that the tariffs “injected a new dose of uncertainty for consumers and businesses still wondering what’s going to happen and when.”

He acknowledged Trump’s view:

Trump has promised that his tax increases on the nearly $3 trillion in goods imported to the United States will usher in newfound wealth, launch a cavalcade of new factory jobs, reduce the budget deficits and, simply, get other countries to treat America with more respect.

But then rebutted it:

The vast tariffs risk jeopardizing America’s global standing as allies feel forced into unfriendly deals. As taxes on the raw materials used by U.S. factories and basic goods, the tariffs also threaten to create new inflationary pressures and hamper economic growth — concerns the Trump White House has dismissed.

And he reported that some observers “saw a policy carelessly constructed by the U.S. president, one that could impose harms gradually over time that would erode America’s power and prosperity.”

The AP was quick to link this morning’s poor jobs report to Trump’s tariffs. Paul Wiseman and Christpher Rubager wrote:

U.S. hiring is slowing sharply as President Donald Trump’s erratic and radical trade policies paralyze businesses and raise doubts about the outlook for the world’s largest economy.…

“A notable deterioration in U.S. labor market conditions appears to be underway,’' said Scott Anderson, chief U.S. economist at BMO Capital Markets. ”We have been forecasting this since the tariff and trade war erupted this spring and more restrictive immigration restrictions were put in place. Overall, this report highlights the risk of a harder landing for the labor market.’'

Even the television networks expressed some skepticism. On NBC’s “Today Show” this morning, Garrett Haake quoted Trump saying “we will be taking in hundreds of billions of dollars very quickly.” But Haake immediately explained:

That revenue, though, is paid by U.S. importers and often passed on to consumers potentially leading to higher prices on everything from orange juice and coffee from Brazil to iPhones made in India.

Haake had a brief phone interview with Trump overnight:

I asked the president if he’s concerned about potential price spikes. “The only price that’s spiked is the hundreds of billions coming in,” he told me.

Not Enough

So, as you can see, most mainstream journalists have, over time, lost the naïveté with which they initially greeted Trump’s tariffs.

But they still fail to properly contextualize the tariffs for their readers and viewers.

The tariffs are not a rational response to economic conditions.

They represent a massive and destructive disruption to the world’s economy that almost no one but Trump thinks is a good idea. (Even the sycophants who support everything Trump does can't really articulate any good reason for them.)

And he thinks it’s a good idea because he is clueless about how the economy works – including about how tariffs work – while he delights in arbitrary expressions of his power.