As his legal troubles continued to mount, Donald Trump last week assembled a meeting with his top economic advisers to conceive a trade-focused plan for his presidential campaign, The Washington Post reported.
The meeting, which included figures such as Larry Kudlow and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, focused on how Trump could hit President Joe Biden on the economy in light of recent news showing Biden's economic policies in a positive light.
"Among the ideas they discussed was Trump’s plan to enact a 'universal baseline tariff' on virtually all imports to the United States, the report said. This idea, which Trump has taken to describing as creating a 'ring around the U.S. economy,' could represent a massive escalation of global economic chaos, surpassing the international trade discord that marked much of his first administration," The Post's report stated.
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Sources say Trump's advisers are still discussing where to set the tariff rate, but economists say Trump’s tariff proposal is extremely dangerous. Peterson Institute for International Economics President Adam Posen called the idea “lunacy” and “horrifying” and said it would cause the U.S. to lose trust with other nations.
“You’d be depriving American families of an enormous amount of choice, making their lives much more expensive, and putting millions of people out of work,” Posen said.
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“It would be a disaster for the U.S. economy," said the American Enterprise Institute's Michael Strain.
"It would raise prices for consumers and be met with considerable retaliation from other nations, which would raise the costs facing U.S. businesses. It would reduce employment among manufacturing workers,” Strain said. “It would be very, very bad.”
Read the full report over at The Washington Post.
