‘Liberation Day’ Was Messy, but Trump’s Tariffs Can Still Work

Opinion|Stop Freaking Out. Trump’s Tariffs Can Still Work.

Last week’s “Liberation Day” marked a kind of D-Day in the effort to reorder the international economic system. That reordering is desperately needed to address the system’s imbalances, which have led to deindustrialization and annual trillion-dollar trade deficits for the United States. But remember, far from striking World War II’s decisive blow, D-Day was just the start of the European campaign. Eleven months of vicious fighting followed, with more than 100,000 Americans killed before victory was secured. With the tariffs, too, success or failure depends on what happens next, and the nation will have to bear real costs while the outcome hangs in the balance.

The breadth, speed and severity of President Trump’s actions, which he finalized only shortly before the Rose Garden announcement, sparked immediate panic across markets and among allies. The airwaves filled with dire predictions as people scrutinized the sources and sizes of the numbers, the strategy and even the legal authority. Amid the hysteria, fair concerns have also emerged about what the plan lacks: time for companies and governments to respond, permanence for those tariffs intended to shift investments and a clear vision of the goals and how to reach them. But there are simple steps the administration could take now to correct course and move from its embattled beachhead into a sustainable forward position.

The 10 percent global tariff — a foundational permanent policy, which has already taken effect, and which carries a tolerable cost — is the right starting point. Congress should vote it into law as soon as possible. That would confirm its permanence and also provide substantial tax revenue that could help Capitol Hill solve some of its budget math problems. A bill to this effect, the Built USA Act (which I have championed), was introduced in January by Representative Jared Golden, a conservative Democrat.

For the higher, country-specific tariffs that Mr. Trump calls “reciprocal,” the first priority should be to scale them up more gradually, to give markets and allies time to adapt. Throwing supply chains into maximal disarray and imposing the highest burdens faster than companies could possibly move to avoid them leads to excessive costs with few attendant benefits. A second priority for the White House should be communicating the president’s ultimate vision and his plan for getting from here to there, so that everyone can have confidence in the direction and act accordingly. Some opacity may help in preserving leverage, but America’s core demands of its allies should be plain for all to see.

Among targets of the reciprocal tariffs, China belongs in its own category. Having already raised tariffs on China to 20 percent across the board since taking office, above other tariffs already in effect for some products, the president added 34 percentage points on “Liberation Day” and on Monday threatened an additional 50 percentage points if China didn’t back down from its retaliation. The new base line of 54 percent, absent retaliation, approximates the 60 percent tariffs for China on which he campaigned and is best understood as permanent. That’s the right move if the goal is, as it should be, to disentangle the American and Chinese economies. In his first term, he sought to make a deal with Xi Jinping. Now Mr. Trump is, rightly, walking away.

But going from 0 to almost 60 so fast is unnecessary and unwise. The most determined company could not shift production so quickly. A better approach would be to raise the tariff in three steps — 20 percentage points now, in a year, and in two years — and for Congress to legislate this by revoking China’s permanent normal trade relations status, as was the bipartisan recommendation of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in 2024. Legislation already exists for this, cosponsored by Marco Rubio (now Mr. Trump’s secretary of state) when he was in the Senate and accompanied by a bipartisan bill in the House. That legislation envisions tariffs on strategically important goods rising in steps over five years.