Trump’s Tariff Play: Strategy, Not Stumble
Behind the bluster: Why Trump’s tariff play could stabilize markets, pressure trade partners, and reshape globalization.
“Is Trump smarter than they think—or smarter than they dare admit?”
That’s the question raised, perhaps unintentionally, by Apollo Chief Economist Torsten Sløk, who suggests that President Trump’s trade strategy isn’t some chaotic improvisation, but a calculated economic maneuver designed to serve three things Washington forgot long ago: national interest, American labor, and sovereign leverage.
According to Sløk, Trump’s proposal to lock in 30% tariffs on Chinese goods and 10% on all other imports, while giving foreign nations 12 months to adjust, may be less about saber-rattling and more about strategic pressure.
It’s not a trade war. It’s a trade correction.
Tariffs With Teeth
This isn’t about punishing Beijing or Brussels out of spite. It’s about establishing a new global baseline. One that tells the world: the American market is open for business, but no longer for exploitation.
Trump’s plan, if carried forward, would:
Give foreign governments one year to reduce non-tariff barriers and open their markets;
Stabilize U.S. businesses by removing the fog of uncertainty that’s gripped global trade for years;
And generate an estimated $400 billion a year in tariff revenue—without raising taxes on American workers by a cent.
Sløk points to hard numbers: a one standard deviation spike in policy uncertainty knocks U.S. GDP down by 0.2 points. Clarity matters. And in a world addicted to chaos, a steady hand, even if clenched in a fist, can calm markets.
Markets Have Spoken
Critics predicted chaos. Wall Street braced for disaster.
And yet here we are:
-S&P 500 up 12.6% over the past year
-Market fully recovered post-tariff sell-off
If Trump’s tariff policy was reckless, the market didn’t get the memo. What we’re seeing isn’t a collapse, it’s a recalibration. A recovery. A quiet recognition that the era of zero-cost globalization may be over.
And perhaps, that the populists were right.
Populism With a Plan
What critics call “protectionism,” history once called patriotism. The British Empire ran on tariffs. So did Lincoln’s America. It wasn’t until global capital and corporate lobbyists captured the levers of power that tariffs became a dirty word in polite society.
Trump turned that on its head. And now, it seems, even Wall Street’s own economists are starting to wonder: maybe he wasn’t bluffing. Maybe he was building something. And just maybe, he was right all along.
Sløk’s argument makes one thing clear: this isn’t a short-term stunt. It’s a paradigm shift, a reassertion of national will in an era dominated by transnational decay.
The Risk Is Real. So Is the Reward.
Yes, there are dangers. Inflationary pressure. Foreign retaliation. Friction in supply chains. But those risks already exist under the current order, only without the revenue, without the leverage, and without a plan.
Trump’s approach, for all its bombast, seeks to give American producers a fair shake and foreign competitors a choice: play by new rules, or pay the toll.
And if the result is a stronger, more stable America that can fund itself without groveling before the bond market?
Then maybe, just maybe, the man the establishment mocked for upending global trade was the only one who understood how badly it needed to be upended.