‘Tariff man’: Trump’s long history with trade wars ()
<img src="https://thesun.my/binrepository/400x267/0c21/400d225/none/11808/VSVN/2025-03-31t224214z-734148806-rc2goda0gl9s-rtrmadp-3-usa-trump_5088619_20250401110126.jpg"><p><b>WASHINGTON: </b>Donald Trump loves few things more than talking about his affinity for tariffs, but it's nothing new: he's been saying the same thing for decades.</p><p>“To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is ‘tariff,‘” Trump repeatedly said on the campaign trail for the 2024 election.</p><p>He has since joked that it is now his fourth favorite word, after love, God and family -- but his commitment to them remains as strong as ever.</p><p>The 78-year-old Republican has promised a “Liberation Day” for America on Wednesday when he announces sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs targeting any country that has import levies against US goods.</p><p>The sudden trade war has sent leading world economies scrambling -- yet anyone surprised by the onslaught has not been listening to Trump himself.</p><p>Other policies have come and gone, especially on hot-button issues such as abortion, but Trump's belief that America is being ripped off by the world has remained one of his core values.</p><p>So has his innate conviction that tariffs are the solution, despite arguments by opponents and many economists that US consumers will suffer when importers pass on increased prices.</p><p><b></b></p><p><b>'Ripping off' </b></p><p></p><p>“I am a Tariff Man,“ Trump declared in a social media post back in 2018 during his first presidential term.</p><p>In fact, Trump has been saying as much since the 1980s.</p><p>His main target then was Japan, as Trump -- best known in those days as a brash property dealer and tabloid fixture -- discussed getting into politics in an interview with CNN's Larry King.</p><p>“A lot of people are tired of watching other countries ripping off the United States,“ Trump said in 1987, using rhetoric that has changed little in the intervening 38 years.</p><p>“Behind our backs, they laugh at us because of our own stupidity.”</p><p>In a separate interview with chat show host Oprah Winfrey, he raged: “We let Japan come in and dump everything right into our markets.”</p><p>By the 1990s and early 2000s, China entered his crosshairs, and Beijing remains one of his top tariff targets, along with Canada, Mexico and the European Union.</p><p>In his successful 2016 election campaign, Trump stepped up the rhetoric, saying: “We can’t continue to allow China to rape our country.”</p><p><b></b></p><p><b>'Very rich'</b></p><p></p><p>During his second term, Trump has also started citing a historical precedent going back more than a century -- President William McKinley.</p><p>McKinley's passion for both territorial expansion and economic protectionism during his time in office from 1897 to 1901 could have been the model for Trump's “Make America Great Again” policies.</p><p>“President McKinley made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent -- he was a natural businessman,“ Trump said in his inauguration speech in January.</p><p>Trump's promises of a “Golden Age” harkens back to the so-called “Gilded Age” that culminated with McKinley’s presidency, a time when America’s population and economy exploded -- along with the power of oligarchs.</p><p>In addition to deploying tariffs, McKinley presided over a period of territorial adventurism for the United States, including the Spanish-American war and the purchases of Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.</p><p>Such moves echo Trump's own designs for Greenland, Panama and Canada.</p><p>The two also share the unwanted similarity of being struck by an assassin's bullet -- although Trump survived the attempt on his life at an election rally last July, while McKinley was killed by an anarchist in 1901.</p>
