[MajimasEyepatch]

That's not the simplest possible explanation. The simplest explanation is that he did this because he believes in it. Trump has been saying the exact same thing about tariffs since the 1980s—there's video of him talking to Larry King about it in 1987, using exactly the same phrasing and logic that he uses today.

Donald Trump fundamentally believes that everything in life is a zero-sum game, and moreover that everyone is as crooked as him: either you're screwing someone else or you're getting screwed. That's why he's so obsessed with trade deficits specifically, because to him, that negative sign screams "you're getting ripped off."

There are other benefits. By imposing the tariffs like this and wielding them through executive power, he can extort countries and corporations to give him what he wants in exchanging for releasing the hostages, so to speak. And I'm sure people in his orbit _also_ used this as a get-rich-quick scheme, because these people are all grifters. But that is all secondary to the fact that he has believed this for forty years and finally got a chance to do it.

[breadwinner]

> finally got a chance to do it

He could have done it in his first term.

[SpicyLemonZest]

He tried to, but his advisors stopped him. Bob Woodward reported that Gary Cohn snatched papers off his desk on multiple different occasions to stop him from starting trade wars at the beginning of his first term.

[myvoiceismypass]

There were adults in the room in the first term. Now, just loyalists, sycophants, and grifters.