Donald Trump’s two minds on tariffs

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Donald Trump contains multitudes. Trying to understand his thinking or divine his motives can drive you insane—which is maybe the point.

The uproar over Mr. Trump’s decision to impose and then postpone tariffs on Mexico and Canada offers competing interpretations. But I am partial to one that doesn’t seek coherence.

Mr. Trump, as a variety of writers have long noted in these pages, holds two contradictory views on tariffs. First, he believes they are capable of raising enormous revenue.

Second, he believes the threat of their use can persuade other nations to behave in ways that align with U.S. interests. The problem is that success in one precludes success in the other: Either you raise revenue by imposing tariffs, or you push other nations around by merely threatening to use them.

If the test of a first-rate intelligence, as F. Scott Fitzgerald observed, is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function, Mr. Trump has a lot going on upstairs.

He states the first view with conviction. He often compares himself to President William McKinley, who “made our country very rich through tariffs and through talent," as Mr. Trump put it in his Second Inaugural Address.

“My message to every business in the world is very simple," he said at last month’s World Economic Forum: “Come make your product in America, and we will give you among the lowest taxes of any nation on Earth. . .

. But if you don’t make your product in America, which is your prerogative, then, very simply, you will have to pay a tariff . .