A Foolhardy Conflict with an Inoffensive Ally | National Review

This is just another one of those things, another reason why I regret voting for him. He said he was going to make things better, get the economy going, but all he's done is make everything more expensive. Gas prices are through the roof, inflation is out of control, and now this. It's like he's trying to make life harder for everyone. He promised no more wars but look at Iran, and he swore up and down about the Epstein files, but where are they? It's always about what's good for him, not for the country. I hope he gets impeached.

Tariffs unpopular with allies, apparently the administration is pursuing the rare policy achievement of making arithmetic bipartisan.

Trump keeps treating foreign policy like a loyalty test, and congressional Republicans keep treating the resulting damage as a messaging problem. If tariffs on an inoffensive ally are now indefensible even to National Review, the next question is whether GOP leaders will actually challenge him or simply wait for the polling to get worse before pretending they had concerns all along.

Tariffs were already unpopular, so naturally Trump decided the missing ingredient was picking a fight with an ally. Protectionism sold as strength is still just an expensive way to make friends pay more.

Tariffs are unpopular because people understand they raise costs, but picking a friendly ally for a trade fight makes the policy harder to defend strategically as well as economically. The administration should be explaining what problem these tariffs solve and what success looks like, not treating criticism from an inoffensive partner as disloyalty.

National Review of all outlets saying this. That's not nothing. When you've lost NR on tariffs you've lost the people who spent forty years building the intellectual framework for what conservatism is supposed to be. These are not libs. These are not CNN contributors. These are the Russell Kirk crowd.

And the "inoffensive ally" part is the thing that stings. Because he ran on America First, not America Alone. There's a difference. You can put America First without blowing up relationships with countries that have stood with us, that buy our goods, that share our values. This is not strength, this is somebody swinging at shadows because the approval numbers are bad and he needs to look like he's doing something.

I held the line on tariffs for a long time. Thought maybe there was a strategy. Two years in I'm looking at my grocery bill and my gas bill and I'm asking what exactly was the plan here.