Trump’s Tariffs Stretch Security Exceptions to the Breaking Point

In the mid-1970s, when Bjorn Borg was still ascendant and ABBA was just starting to churn out hits, Sweden gained notoriety for something entirely different: wantonly abusing the national-security exception enshrined in international trade law.

Sweden sought to protect its sneaker business, and to do so invoked the claim that a domestic footwear industry was crucial to the country’s national defense. It’s a relatively famous case, one of the first big tests of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) tolerance for absurdity, and it used to be a funny footnote.

But with U.S. President Donald Trump, it became a template. In his first term, he used the WTO security exceptions to levy tariffs on steel and aluminum, and has done the same, only harder, in his second term. Last week, he invoked national security to slap tariffs on imports of cars and car parts. His administration is considering imposing more tariffs later this week on major trading partners such as Canada, Mexico, the European Union, and other parts of the world.

The reason this is problematic now—and for those scoring at home, Trump is using Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act—is the same reason it was problematic then. If everything is national security—the administration’s list essentially includes everything from T-tops to rebar—then nothing is.

“The United States under Trump 2.0 is invoking economic security as a be-all and end-all. Everything that touches the U.S. economy becomes a matter of national security,” said Mona Paulsen, a trade expert at the London School of Economics.

In a forthcoming paper, Paulsen notes, citing a children’s game, “Today’s economic security may be the paper that covers rock.” Or as she told me: “No matter what you do, you can just claim a national security imperative, and get on with it, and you don’t have to talk to trading partners or to Congress.”

She stressed that the Trump administration’s creative approach to trade is not limited to Section 232 but involves the invocation of national emergencies more broadly.

To be sure, the nexus between national security and trade policy was not invented by Trump. After World War II, when U.S. officials sought to create a durable global order, trade was at the top of the agenda. It wasn’t entirely free trade, but conditioned. Friends and allies got preferential treatment, and foes got shortchanged. Witness the birth of the International Trade Organization, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and the Marshall Plan, and the economic blockade on the nascent Soviet sphere. 

The difference is that when in the past the United States explicitly linked trade to security, it did so to bolster its allies and to hobble its enemies.

Trump instead has targeted allies since taking office for a second time. His administration has threatened tariffs on Canada and Mexico, paused them, re-introduced them, paused them again, and will this week presumably put them back on. He has threatened Europe with trade reprisals. He has cowed Japan and South Korea, the two states that are crucial to any plans the Trump administration has to building a workable alliance against North Korea’s adventurism and China’s expansionism. 

Also, to be fair, it’s not just the United States and it is not just Trump. Since the COVID pandemic, there has been an epidemic of protectionist measures around the world. Part of it is a response to COVID vulnerabilities, part of it is pure economic nationalism, and part of it is a reaction to American policies. Still, it all makes economists shake their heads.

As part of Trump’s outreach to Russia, he is contemplating sanctions relief for Moscow—even before Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed to a long-term cease-fire. It gives truth to what Edward Fishman, a sanctions expert, called the “impossible trinity”: You can have a global economy, or economic security, or geopolitical competition. What you can’t have is all three. 

“In terms of ‘emergencies,’ it is starting to feel like the period following 9/11. If everything is an emergency, then nothing is a priority,” said Jonathan Hillman, a senior fellow for geoeconomics at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“Tariffs are only part of a much broader toolkit. They aren’t a Swiss Army knife for all economic and strategic challenges.”