How Trump’s Trade Policy Mirrors the Mistakes of Bidenomics

So, Donald Trump gained the White House, and so he risks losing for his party the hard-won coalitional gains of the ’24 cycle.

Many assumed while voting in 2024 for Donald Trump that his second presidency would be a repudiation of Joe Biden’s. Trump’s mandate (in only slightly reductive terms) was to be utterly unlike his predecessor, whose stint as chief executive took shape from the mold of the archetypical left-wing managerial expert. This type is well-educated, well-connected, well-to-do, and wholly ignorant of the most remedial lessons of political economy. Trump’s devotion to erecting the highest trade barriers since the likes of Sen. Reed Smoot (R-Utah) and Rep. Willis C. Hawley (R-Ore.) roamed the earth reveal the 47th president, at least in this respect, to be less as a foil of the 46th than as the red-tinted mirror image of Bidenism.

Last month, the Trump administration announced that a series of investigations undertaken under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 had concluded in the tariffing of scores of the United States’ trading partners. The purportedly unfairness to which the administration objects is the use of forced labor and failures to enforce prohibitions thereon, which are said to disadvantage American businesses.

The word “investigation,” in its literal meaning, refers to the seeking of information, but to the administration it meant little besides procedural box-checking required to achieve predetermined protectionist objectives. Not coincidentally, the most recent tariffs arrived at the very minute Trump’s previous batch of tariffs—imposed under Section 301’s statutory sibling, Section 122—were set to expire. Moreover, the burdens newly imposed under Section 301 closely resemble those imposed under Section 122. Such was the administration’s plan: “[W]e will be implementing or conducting Section 301 studies so that the tariffs could be back in place at the previous level,” Department of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in April. The shoddiness of the United States Trade Representative’s analysis—catalogued thoroughly by the Cato Institute’s Scott Lincicome—confirms suspicions that the results of these investigations were preordained and their contents mere perfunctory gestures.

The Section-122-to-Section-301 two-step was, quite like Biden’s second attempt to forgive student loans, an attempt to dance around an inconvenient ruling of the Supreme Court, which, in February, ended Trump’s first protectionist barrage. Consequently, the President’s trade policy under Section 301—intended to contravene foreign malfeasance, and nothing more—has the appearance of something approaching a global baseline tariff, as did the duties blocked by the High Court.

Trump cannot be kept from pursuing protectionism—not by the Supreme Court and not by evidence of the ills it has inflicted upon the American economy. Nor can he be restrained by the mass of the American people, including many who in 2024 voted for him and ousted the Democrats. “Millions of Democrats will join our movement because we are going to fix the [trade] system so it works for all Americans,” Candidate Trump told the Republican National Convention in 2016. He has failed to make good: more than 60 percent of respondents told Fox News pollsters that they disapprove of Trump’s trade policy. Trump is not a man who often holds consistently to political or economic doctrines. But he has for decades disliked free trade and cannot escape this commitment, even as it damages the American economy and his own party’s political position.

The ordinary Americans forgotten amidst this riot of protectionism are not the C-suite executives of multinational corporations. The estimated cost per American household in 2026 of Trump’s tariffs, imposed and threatened, comes to $900, according to the Tax Foundation. A recent survey of small businesses found that the average respondent was laden with a burden nearing $150,000, with one in five paying out more than $1 million in tariff-induced costs. Also, 85 percent reported reduced margins, 83 percent raised prices, 56 percent “delayed or canceled expansion/investment plans,” 45 percent incurred new debts, 36 percent retreated from new product development, 29 percent terminated employees, and 23 percent “cut existing employees’ hours, wages, or benefits.” The ethos of Bidenomics—a dogged commitment to theory in the face of facts that ought to relegate that theory to oblivion—has survived the presidency of the man for whom it was named.

“They are almost completely controlled by lobbyists, donors and the special interests—they do not have the best interests of our people at heart.” These words, a condemnation of American politicians, were some of the first Trump uttered in the 2015 address during which he announced his bid for the presidency. Under his protectionism, however, these lobbyists and special interests seem to be doing just fine. Consider the findings of a new report from Advancing American Freedom: there has been a “690% increase in second-quarter (Q2) tariff lobbying revenues in 2026 vs. 2024,” a “956% increase in Q2 tariff lobbying revenues vs. 2016, pre-Trump levels,” and a “230% increase in the number of registered tariff lobbying disclosures vs. 2024.” These are not the beneficiaries a populist president might hope for.

It is not just the economy, stupid; homo economicus is a mythical creature. But when the America people encounter with their government’s policies consist primarily of high grocery prices and high energy bills, when entrepreneurs routinely feel the concussive effects of collisions with regulatory barriers, when state action accomplishes little besides diminishing consumers’ purchasing power and enervating industry, the party holding power should expect punishment in the next election. So, Donald Trump gained the White House, and so he risks losing for his party the hard-won coalitional gains of the ’24 cycle.