In a recent Wall Street Journal piece, I argued that erratic tariff policy has alienated our allies and that the world is increasingly building trade relationships that don’t require American participation. Days later, a Letter to the Editor was published responding to it.
I’ll confess that finding so much common ground with someone of Meizlish’s caliber is both flattering and, given the state of trade policy discourse, genuinely refreshing. We agree on the core argument, we agree on the facts, and we want the same thing: a more secure and prosperous United States. That said, there are differences worth spelling out. I’ll go through the letter paragraph by paragraph, which I recognize can look combative, but isn’t meant to be.
David Hebert writes that the world is growing tired of the US and “reglobalizing around partners who commit to rules rather than those who wield tariffs like a club” (“Everyone Else Is Trading Without Us,” op-ed, Feb. 27). It’s a fair observation, but his piece avoids addressing the threat from China.
“Avoid” is a strong word. I didn’t “avoid” addressing China because “addressing China” wasn’t relevant to the thesis of my piece: that inconsistent, erratic tariff policy and the sudden reneging on past agreements have alienated our friends.
Meizlish continued, noting the collapse in imports from China — with a crucial caveat.
Recent Commerce Department data adds crucial context. American imports from China collapsed by nearly 30 percent in 2025 while European flows into the US grew. Notwithstanding the real potential of Chinese goods making their way into the US by way of Europe, that looks less like American isolation than the beginnings of a reorientation Washington has been trying to engineer.
It’s on the issue of transshipment where I part ways with Meizlish. He acknowledges that transshipment — for example, China routing goods to the United States through Europe — is a real possibility, then quickly moves past it. But this is a serious and well-documented problem, serious enough that the Department of Justice has created a Trade Fraud Task Force.
Transshipment is incredibly hard to protect against and enforce. It will almost certainly be fraught with minutiae and judgment calls. If China creates the steel that goes into engine components machined in Germany before ultimately finding their way into a Ford F-150, are those parts subject to Chinese tariff rates or German tariff rates? The answer, like beauty, “lies in the eye of the beholder.”
And therein lies the problem: in a world where tariff rates are determined by rules and long-standing relationships, the answer to this question is basically inconsequential for business-minded people. When tariffs are imposed whenever “the White House finds a new grievance,” they matter.
My suspicion is that Meizlish agrees with me on the transshipment front and that, if he had a larger word count, he could have elaborated on this. But the printed words give the impression that this is possible but not that big of a deal. But insofar as transshipment is happening, that’s an argument against the efficacy of tariffs to accomplish their stated goals and it should be counted as such.
Moving on, Meizlish points out some of the effects of the tariffs that have actually been implemented. On this, we are in total agreement. But when it comes to what to do moving forward, we differ.
Broad tariffs moved imports away from China without meaningfully closing the overall trade deficit or generating the export growth the administration needs. Finishing the job will require smarter tools — targeted tariffs, trade agreements and investment incentives — not a retreat from economic pressure.
The call for “smart policy” is a classic and technocratic move. The problem is that this argument is completely unfalsifiable. No matter what happens, proponents will always be able to say, “it would have worked if only we had used smart policy, instead.”
Targeted tariffs and other smart policies, however, aren’t some newfangled policy. They’ve been tried. President Obama did it in 2009 on Chinese tires, and President George W. Bush did it in 2002 on Chinese steel. The results weren’t great. Prices rose for American consumers and producers, retaliatory measures from countries around the world followed, and China didn’t meaningfully alter their behavior. But you don’t have to take my word for it: here’s a copy of the 2019 Economic Report of the President, signed by President Trump. From the report itself, “Rather than changing its practices, China announced retaliatory tariffs on US goods.” Targeted tariffs, on their own evidence, haven’t moved Beijing. If they had, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
“Trade agreements and investment incentives” are genuinely good tools. But for them to be a viable strategy, the US must be seen as a reliable, predictable partner. And unfortunately, the US just is not as trustworthy as we once were, so our ability to make those trade deals or to provide investment incentives has been diminished and other countries are increasingly looking elsewhere.
Hebert also notes that so-called middle powers are expanding trade among themselves. That may be true, but whether it represents a problem depends entirely on if those relations are pulling countries toward Beijing or away from it.
First: it’s absolutely true (see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here for examples). And Meizlish is correct that the key question is whether these relationships pull countries toward or away from Beijing. The answer depends crucially on what kind of trading partner the rest of the world can expect out of Beijing (as compared to the United States). On this, we don’t need to speculate. China ended 2025 with a record $1.2 trillion trade surplus precisely because, as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney pointed out, China is “more predictable” than the US.
Now consider the broader pattern. The Greenland episode, where the US openly discussed annexing the territory of a NATO ally and threatened tariffs against anyone who stood in our way, drew global condemnation. Then, consider what happened with Switzerland just a few weeks ago: in his own words, President Trump “didn’t really like the way [Swiss Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter] talked to us and so instead of giving her a reduction, I raised [Swiss tariffs] to 39 percent.” Finally, remember all the humiliations that Trump launched toward Canada in early 2025. None of this bodes well for the US in terms of generating the stability and predictability that other countries are looking for when signing new trade deals.
The Supreme Court may have struck down the ability of the President to use IEEPA, which is a meaningful check on the President’s power going forward. However, it does nothing to erase what the world now knows the US is willing to attempt. Businesses deciding where to locate and who to work with aren’t just assessing today’s legal situation but its broader views on trade and property. Checks and balances are important, but there are limits to how much comfort they offer to a business underwriting a decades-long capital investment.
Finally, Meizlish argues something must be done about China.
A trading world organized around rules rather than coercion has an obvious antagonist — one whose industrial subsidies and currency manipulation destabilized the system Mr. Hebert wants to restore. Getting the rules-based order right requires naming who the rules are designed to constrain. That shouldn’t be too hard.
He’s right, it isn’t hard: China is a bad actor on the world stage. On this, we are in total agreement.
But the solution to China’s nefarious ways does not lie in tariffing Canada, the European Union, Japan, Mexico, and South Korea. Those countries have been our friends and allies for generations at this point. And they could have easily been the coalition partners we needed to build an effective multilateral response to Beijing. Instead, what we’ve done over the past year is pick trade fights with every potential ally simultaneously.
The simple fact is that, relative to Beijing, the US looks unpredictable and chaotic. That’s a very big problem. The US cannot go it alone against China and get them to change their tune. This isn’t because we’re “too weak” or anything of the sort, it’s because that’s not how Chinese diplomacy works. It will take a coalition of willing and enthusiastic partners to accomplish the goals vis-à-vis Chinese trade policy that Meizlish and I recognize and share.
It isn’t too late to start rebuilding the relationships that have been damaged by the past year of US trade policy, but time is running out. Tariffs have been a rotten deal for the American people. If we don’t reverse course now, they’ll only make it more difficult for us to accomplish other, important goals.
