Analysis: Trump's Fundamental Miscalculation on Tariffs

The Abacus Data poll above reveals President Trump's fundamental miscalculation. He appears to believe that he can bully anyone to do anything he wants--if he just tightens the screws enough.

And while that may be true for Republicans in Congress, it's universally not true for people anywhere. When people believe their country is under attack, they rally behind their government. It makes no difference whether that attack is military or economic. And while Trump and U.S. liberals may believe that people will rise up to overthrow their government if economic conditions get too difficult, that too is not true.

The explains why the Russian people have tolerated four years of Putin's war on Ukraine, why the Iranian mullahs remain in power despite Trump's intense bombing campaign. It was true during World War II – neither Japan nor Russia quit until they were militarily defeated and occupied.

It's a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature. Trump is not the first president to fundamentally misunderstand human nature. President John F. Kennedy was the first president to use economic sanctions on a foreign government and its people as a permanent, aggressive, peacetime foreign policy weapon. They don't work.

Sanctions President Kennedy imposed on Cuba more than 60 years ago have failed to dislodge the communist regime. The people have suffered tremendously, but there's been no uprising.

Sanctions against Iran, imposed in the 1970s by President Jimmy Carter have not forced out Tehran's theocratic rulers, but they have pushed the country to forge close alliances with Russia and China.

More than 20 years of U.S. sanctions didn't dislodge Bashar al-Assad from Syria. A lightning military offensive by opposition forces ended a 14-year civil war and sent him fleeing to Moscow where he was granted asylum.

What sanctions have done is push autocratic regimes into black market trading, empowered criminal networks and gangs of smugglers. Now China is leading U.S adversaries in finding ways around the U.S. economic penalties.

To be sure, sanctions have paid off sometimes. They helped bring an end to South Africa's apartheid region and helped overthrow the Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic.

The difference between President Trump and prior presidents is they did not use tariffs to try to force other nations to do what the U.S. administration wanted, and they haven't been used against U.S. friends or members of NATO.

There's no reason to think Canada will cave to Trump's tariffs, so U.S. beer, wine and spirits will remain off Canadian store shelves at least until the end of his presidency. And who is this hurting every day? U.S. producers, their employees and their suppliers.