Trump's tariff strategy can work but America still needs deeper economic reform

President Donald Trump's tariff strategy has sparked global negotiations, but true economic recovery requires addressing domestic issues like regulation and tax policies.

America must also seriously evaluate what turned the Industrial Belt into the Rust Belt. This hollowing out of the nation’s industrial base was not caused primarily by international trade. Instead, the primary carcinogens were terrible regulatory and tax policies. E.J. Antoni, Ph.D., is a public finance economist, the Richard F. Aster fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and a senior fellow at Unleash Prosperity.

The Trump administration’s play here is to use tariffs as a tool of statecraft to force other nations into reducing their trade barriers through bilateral negotiations. To that end, the preliminary agreement with the United Kingdom shows some promise.