More on trade from the Times

Trump embraces trade war

From the beginning of his insurgent 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Trump has seen “winning” on trade — measured by reducing bilateral trade deficits, particularly with China, the trading partner Mr. Trump is most concerned with — as critical for boosting the economy. 

Reducing trade deficits, he has argued, will work in tandem with lowering taxes and reducing federal regulations, to supercharge growth.

Mr. Trump took several steps last year to freeze or roll back regulations, and he signed a $1.5 trillion tax-cut bill in December. 

He also took initial steps to reorient trade policy, pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and embarking on a fractious renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. 

But while economic growth accelerated, the trade deficit in goods and services widened, to $566 billion for the year, the largest amount since 2008. 

The goods deficit with China hit $375 billion, a record.

The tariffs Mr. Trump announced Thursday were his boldest move yet on trade, and a sign of resurgent power in the White House for economic adviser Peter Navarro and Commerce Secretary Wilbur L. Ross Jr., who have long pushed Mr. Trump to act more aggressively on trade, which was a signature campaign issue. 

They were a reminder to the Republican establishment that Mr. Trump’s theory of the economy is sometimes at odds with traditional free-market conservatism, for as much as they overlap.

On Thursday, the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board called the tariffs the “biggest policy blunder of his Presidency.”

The move is also at odds with a broad and bipartisan swath of previous top White House economists, going back several administrations, who urged Mr. Trump in a letter last year to “to avoid a policy that would likely incur greater economic and diplomatic costs than any conceivable national security gain.” 

Jerome H. Powell, the new Federal Reserve chairman appointed by Mr. Trump, told Congress on Thursday that “the tariff approach is not the best approach” for trade disputes.