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tempestntoday at 9:11 PM0 repliesview on HN

The current round of tariff wars are all about Donald Trump and his obsession with bilateral trade imbalances. Long-term bond rates would be better addressed through the balance of production and taxation in the domestic economy.

Edit: do those downvoting disagree that a focus on bilateral trade imbalances and tariffs is an idiosyncrasy of Trump, and that we would not be seeing similar trade wars with a different president? If so, please make your case. He has repeatedly stated that that is what he feels is important, and has shared explicit motivation for broad tariffs based on facile derivations from bilateral trade imbalances. So it's pretty difficult to see it instead as a reasoned response to long-term bond rates.