The White House touted the rollback of tariffs on China as a "historic trade win" for the U.S., but The Wall Street Journal thinks it looked more like a surrender. In a piece titled "The Great Trump Tariff Rollback," The Journals editorial board labeled President Donald Trumps latest move less a victory than a "major retreat." Rarely has an economic policy been repudiated as soundly, and as quickly, as President Trump's Liberation Day tariffs"and by Mr. Trump's own hand," the board wrote in the scathing Monday piece. "The China deal is more surrender than Trump victory," it added. "Apart from the tariff rollback, neither side announced any broader concessions on the substantive trade issues that weigh on the U.S.-China relationship."
"One tragedy of Mr. Trump's shoot-America-in-the-foot-first approach is that he's hurt his chances of rallying a united front of countries against Beijing's mercantilism," it wrote. "By targeting allies with tariffs, Mr. Trump has eroded trust in America's economic and political reliability."
The Journal said the silver lining to the tariff chaos was that markets forced Trump to back down from his "fever dream" that the punitive levies would usher in a new golden age.
"The age didn't last two months, and it was more leaden than golden," the paper said.
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