[DeRock]

This is, as they say, “sanewashing”. Trump is doing this out of a mix of spite and a view of trade as a zero sum game. He may be advised into a path to try to pivot this into a “win” by large scale debt restructuring, but that is not the overarching motive.

[saberdancer]

Fully agreed. Tariffs are one thing that Trump has always been clear about. He likes them, he sees them as beneficial and now that he has no brakes in this administration he is finally going to try and put them in place.

There is no 4D chess.

[XorNot]

I mean it's also clear he doesn't understand them. The poster he posed with today has a column labelled "tarrifs charged to the USA".

The main feature of them was he discovered in his first term he could do them unilaterally without Congress, and his audience would just go along with it anyway.