Trump seems to genuinely believe that he can rule the world through tariffs by using them as a cudgel to make foreign countries stop laughing at us. But there’s another reason he loves them. They give him power over American businesses and a massive opportunity for corruption:
The sweeping tariffs that President-elect Donald J. Trump imposed in his first term on foreign metals, machinery, clothing and other products were intended to have maximum impact around the world. They sought to shutter foreign factories, rework international supply chains and force companies to make big investments in the United States.
But for many businesses, the most important consequences of the tariffs, enacted in 2018 and 2019, unfolded just a few blocks from the White House.
In the face of pushback from companies reliant on foreign products, the Trump administration set up a process that allowed them to apply for special exemptions. The stakes were high: An exemption could relieve a company of tariffs as high as 25 percent, potentially giving it a big advantage over competitors.
That ignited a swift and often successful lobbying effort, especially from Washington’s high-priced K Street law firms, which ended up applying for hundreds of thousands of tariff exemptions. The Office of the United States Trade Representative, which handled exclusions for the China tariffs, fielded more than 50,000 requests, while the Commerce Department received nearly 500,000 exclusion requests for the tariffs on steel and aluminum.
As Mr. Trump dangles new and potentially more expensive tariffs, many companies are already angling to obtain relief. Lawyers and lobbyists in Washington say they are receiving an influx of requests from companies that want to hire their services, even before the full extent of the president-elect’s tariff plans becomes clear.
He will use taxpayer money to make whole the companies that play ball with him just as he did with the farmers in his first term.
While Mr. Trump has often promised to “drain the swamp” in Washington, some have argued that these trade rules did the opposite. Tracking by OpenSecrets, a nonprofit organization, showed that the number of clients lobbying Congress on trade issues ticked up noticeably once Mr. Trump took office, growing more than 50 percent from 2016 to hit a record high in 2019.
First of all, when he says “drain the swamp” he means anyone who is hostile to him. It has nothing to do with corruption. He believes in corruption and frankly makes no bones about it. There’s no reason to pretend otherwise. In fact, this scheme is largely just another grift opportunity. Trump will have leverage over many companies and he will use it.
One recent economic study also found evidence that Trump officials had used the exemption process to reward their supporters and punish opponents.
The study, which looked at nearly 7,000 company applications, found that an increase in past contributions to Republicans raised the likelihood of a company’s receiving an exemption. A history of past contributions to Democrats, meanwhile, decreased a company’s chances of winning a lucrative exemption.
“I would not be surprised at all if this happened again,” he said.
It’s guaranteed. The only losers in this scheme will be the people who are buying goods, but at least half the ocuntry will be convinced that they’re actually paying less because Dear Leader tells them so.
