President Trump is pursuing a far more aggressive trade policy than he embraced in his first term, allowing his unfettered instincts about how to put America at the forefront to guide him with little pretense of investigations or extended deliberations.
Since taking office, Mr. Trump has threatened punishing tariffs on goods from every global trading partner. That includes proposals to tax more than $1.3 trillion of imports from Canada, Mexico and China — many times the volume of trade his tariffs affected in his entire first term.
On Thursday, Mr. Trump proposed his most aggressive and consequential measure to date with a global rework of tariffs — a move that made it clear that the president would have no qualms about weaponizing tariffs and antagonizing trading partners to extract concessions.
Mr. Trump ordered his advisers to devise new tariff rates for other countries globally, based on the tariffs they charge the United States, as well as other practices, including other taxes they charge on U.S. goods and subsidies they provide to support their industries.
The president’s decision to embrace what he calls “reciprocal tariffs” could shatter the commitments the United States has made internationally through the World Trade Organization. That would end decades in which the United States has generally abided by the commitments it made internationally and would potentially usher in a new era of corporate uncertainty and global trade wars.
Some of Mr. Trump’s threats could amount to negotiating tactics and fail to materialize. He sees tariffs as a powerful persuasive tool, which he is readily deploying to try to force other countries to make concessions on migration, drug enforcement and even their territory. But he and his base of supporters also view them as a crucial policy in their own right, a way to reverse decades of factories leaving the United States and to create jobs and shrink trade deficits.
While Mr. Trump has long held those views, he was reined in during his first term by opponents of tariffs. Some of his own advisers, leading Republican politicians and many in the business community argued that aggressive tariffs would hurt the stock market and the global economy.
This time around, the president is flanked by advisers who support his combative trade agenda. They include Peter Navarro, an ardent trade skeptic, who is one of Mr. Trump’s top trade advisers and is helping to craft his policies. Howard Lutnick, whom Mr. Trump has nominated as his commerce secretary, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have also publicly announced their support for tariffs.
During Mr. Trump’s first term, it took him more than a year to impose any tariffs. The president stunned the world in April 2017 by initiating a national security investigation into tens of billions of dollars of steel and aluminum imports, including those from allies like Canada, Europe and Mexico. But that inquiry did not result in levies until nearly a year later.
In August of 2017, the president announced an investigation into China’s trade practices, which Mr. Trump had repeatedly called “unfair.” While he ultimately imposed sweeping tariffs on more than $300 billion of goods, they did not begin going into effect until July 2018, after his trade negotiators had written a report and held public hearings.
Mr. Trump is no longer willing to wait for lengthy investigations before imposing tariffs. On his first day in office, the president commissioned reports on nearly two dozen trade topics from his advisers, which are due in April. But since then, the president has announced several related trade actions without waiting to see what the reports say.
On Thursday, Mr. Trump outlined his plan for reciprocal tariffs — also the subject of a study due in April — which he said would even out decades of unfair American relationships.
“We don’t want it to hurt other countries, but they’ve been taking advantage of us for years and years and years, and they’ve charged us tariffs,” he said. “If they charge us, we’ll charge them.”
That came just days after Mr. Trump said he would impose 25 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum from all countries as of March 12, with no exclusions.
On Feb. 1, Mr. Trump came to the brink of imposing tariffs on all goods from Canada and Mexico — more than $900 billion of trade — over concerns about illegal drugs and migrants.
He ultimately paused those measures for one month after winning some modest concessions. But he moved forward with an additional 10 percent tariff on all goods from China, more than $400 billion of products, as punishment for what he said was Beijing’s failure to curb the flow of fentanyl into the United States.
It remains to be seen if other forces will ultimately dissuade Mr. Trump. He could be swayed by a collapse in the stock markets, which he has always viewed as a record of his performance — though on Thursday, markets closed higher as investors shrugged off Mr. Trump’s announcement. Or perhaps complaints from businesses exposed to retaliation abroad and from farmers, who depend on export sales, could encourage him to soften some of his plans.
But so far, Mr. Trump has not displayed much sympathy for the consequences of a fast-moving approach on global businesses and governments. The tariff threats have sparked frustration, anger and even boycotts in foreign countries. The European Union, China, Canada and Mexico are drawing up their retaliation lists, which could hurt American farmers and other exporters.
Some domestic manufacturers have expressed support for the president’s agenda. Kevin Dempsey, the chief executive of the American Iron and Steel Institute, applauded Mr. Trump’s action in a statement, describing it as “the development of a comprehensive plan for restoring fairness in U.S. trade relationships.”
But other companies say they have frozen investment and hiring plans as they wait to see whether the president will move forward with consequential tariffs.
David French, an executive vice president at the National Retail Federation, said that his group supported reducing trade barriers and imbalances, but also that the scale of the president’s undertaking “is massive and will be extremely disruptive to our supply chains.”
“It will likely result in higher prices for hardworking American families and will erode household spending power,” he said. He mentioned that an index of consumer sentiment continued to decline, “suggesting consumers are alarmed about trade war uncertainty.”
In a statement Tuesday, the American Chamber of Commerce to the European Union, which represents U.S. businesses in Europe, said that the tariffs on steel and aluminum would have “a wide-reaching and overwhelmingly negative impact on jobs, prosperity and security on both sides of the Atlantic.”
Douglas Irwin, a trade historian at Dartmouth College, said that Mr. Trump’s proposed tariffs would be one of the steepest increases in trade taxes in American history, and the largest since the Smoot-Hawley tariff of the 1930s.
The tariffs the president has threatened to impose on goods from Canada, Mexico and China alone “would constitute a historic event in the annals of U.S. trade policy,” he wrote.
The trade proposals — particularly the so-called reciprocal tariffs — could also be the final blow for an increasingly battered global trading system, led by the World Trade Organization. In a forthcoming essay, Edward Alden and Jennifer Hillman, trade experts at the Council on Foreign Relations, called the president’s proposal “a complete violation of our W.T.O. obligations to keep tariffs within negotiated limits.”
“That would put a stake through what remains of the W.T.O. rules,” they said.
Still, Mr. Alden said he was not sure Mr. Trump would be able or willing to follow through with his pugilistic approach. There could be fierce pushback from American businesses, and enforcing so many different tariff rules globally would be a “nightmare” for customs officials, among other challenges, he said.
“I am comforted slightly that the administration has no idea what it’s getting into,” Mr. Alden said.
