How Trump turned the tide in his trade war

President Donald Trump has pulled off an impressive feat: He is raising tariffs on some of America’s most important trading partners, and the world is largely cheering the agreements as victories.

President Donald Trump has pulled off an impressive feat: He is raising tariffs on some of America’s most important trading partners, and the world is largely cheering the agreements as victories. Placing historically high taxes on imports from around the world — particularly at a time when American consumers are still reeling from the highest inflation they’ve experienced in four decades — marked one of Trump’s boldest gambles of his presidency. Trump was largely elected on his pledge to fix Americans’ finances. Economists have widely shunned his trade policy, which is expected to raise costs for businesses and consumers. But Trump zagged when everyone was zigging, and — so far — the bet has paid off. He achieved that with some old-fashioned psychology: setting the bar so high for potential tariff pain that anything that has come below that bar appears like a win. Trump “always has a plan, but it’s not always obvious,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Bloomberg Television Wednesday morning. For example, Trump had threatened Japan with a 25% tariff earlier this month when negotiations stalled. But late Tuesday, a trade agreement between the two nations was announced, including a tariff rate of 15% on Japanese goods imported into the United States. US markets got a healthy bounce higher Wednesday. Japan’s markets took off like a rocket. But 15% is more than the 10% that US importers have been paying for Japanese exports since April, when Trump first rolled out his so-called reciprocal tariffs on trading partners — and much more than what the Japanese were paying before Trump took office.