Trump’s tariffs echo Jefferson’s failed attempt to weaponise trade

Detailed summary

More than 18 months have passed since US President Donald Trump launched his so-called Liberation Day tariffs. On Tuesday, US electorate went to the polls for the midterms, with…

More than 18 months have passed since US President Donald Trump launched his so-called Liberation Day tariffs. On Tuesday, US electorate went to the polls for the midterms, with recent polling revealing uncertainty over how Mr Trump’s shifting tariff policy could affect their personal finances.

Like America’s third president, Thomas Jefferson, in the early 19th century, Mr Trump has used economic measures to counter what he perceived as exploitation by foreign powers. The initial indications are that Mr Trump, like Jefferson, has found economic coercion insufficient to achieve his goals.

During the height of the Napoleonic Wars, Anglo-French naval conflict was adversely affecting the neutral and fledgling American nation. Jefferson’s government was outraged by the increasing incidence of impressment – the practice of forcibly recruiting sailors from American merchant vessels into British naval service. After failed attempts to negotiate respect for US shipping, Jefferson took the drastic step in 1807 of halting American overseas exports and preventing American ships from sailing to foreign ports.

The objective of this drastic escalation was to inflict sufficient economic pain on Britain and France to persuade them to refrain from interfering with American shipping. However, just over a year later, Jefferson was forced to backtrack for three reasons. First, the British continued impressment, aided by the relative ease with which they could obtain alternatives sources of goods previously imported from US. In fact, France used the embargo as a pretext to begin seizing American ships that it had previously ignored. Second, American exporters suffered and lobbied for a policy reversal. Third, the embargo was difficult to enforce given the incentives to smuggle.

Last year, Mr Trump tacitly recognised certain parallels with the situation Jefferson had faced almost 220 years earlier.

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