Friedberg Explains Trump's Tariffs: Take Them Seriously, But Expect Negotiations

for months they've been very declarative We are going to do tariffs Besson said it to us in our interview To use tariffs we're needed to bring other countries into line Lutnik said it to us in our interview We say free and fair trade I want to remind you there ain't no such thing And no one took them seriously and everyone thought they were bluffing And they actually have to do it in order to get the negotiating leverage that they need to be able to negotiate trade deals And they have to look a little crazy It looks like and I'm just trying to take a read on this they're using this as a way to anchor for negotiations going forward

to make the case we are declaratively going to do whatever the heck we want to do here in this administration Now everyone takes them seriously Now everyone shows up to the negotiating table and now they can actually negotiate and then announce a series of win after win after win and say "We got this set of countries to capitulate today by making the case that they're actually willing to go all the way to the wall on stuff." That's the only way I can kind of rationalize this roll