OpinionViewpoints

Dirty Hands Versus Decentralized Producerism: The Populist Logic Behind Trump’s Tariffs

Save
Dirty Hands Versus Decentralized Producerism: The Populist Logic Behind Trump’s Tariffs
industryviews/Shutterstock
Nils Hesse
Updated:
0:00
Commentary

It took the world—and stock markets—a while to grasp that President Donald Trump’s tariffs aren’t primarily intended to achieve reciprocal tariff parity. Rather, they focus absurdly on rectifying individual trade deficits with specific countries. Notably, these tariffs target only imbalances in goods, conveniently overlooking the United States’ substantial surplus in services.

Nils Hesse
Nils Hesse
Author
Nils Hesse is an independent economist, researcher, and publicist based in the D.C. area. He advises the Berlin-based think tank R21, for which he writes on economic and climate policy. As an affiliated fellow at the Walter Eucken Institute, he researches “Ordoliberalism and Populism” from a history of economic thought and public choice perspective. He also hosts an econ-climate podcast. Previously, he was a speechwriter at the German Federal Ministry of Economics, an economic policy advisor at the Federal Chancellery, an economic analyst at the European Commission, and a policy advisor to the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the German Bundestag. His articles appear regularly in publications such as FAZ, WELT, political magazines and economic blogs. He received his PhD in economic policy from the University of Freiburg in 2008.