This is the Cato Daily podcast for Thursday, April 10th, 2025.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The arguments favoring the wide-ranging and large tariffs imposed by the U.S. President are at odds with one another.

And that renders the case for tariffs at best largely incoherent.

Kato's Colin Graboe picks apart the bad arguments for tariffs.

The appropriate policy for the United States is that we don't impose tariffs on the customers who live in the United States. And so the appropriate

tariff level then would be zero. And, but the Trump administration and a lot of defenders

of the White House have said he's trying to get a better deal from these countries. And, you know, if you take a small

country that buys relatively little from us and we buy relatively a lot from them, that's a

trade deficit. Not that we should care about those in particular, but to the extent that the White House is

making these claims that we're trying to get a better deal, how much sense does that make to you?

It makes very little. So, yes, one of the justifications offered for Trump's tariffs is ultimately

they will get us to a better place. By imposing these tariffs, we are

forcing other countries to come to the negotiating table and get this better deal. But let's

think about that. So in the example of, say, Vietnam, which is one of the countries that

allegedly is interested in making a deal with the United States and lowering its trade bearers,

what's interesting here is that first off, we are imposing higher tariffs on interested in making a deal with the United States and lowering its trade barriers.

What's interesting here is at first off, we are imposing higher tariffs on Americans.

So in the interim, until this deal gets negotiated, we are going to be paying higher taxes.

But furthermore, there was a deal already on the table back in 2017 when President Trump took office.

It was called the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

It involved the reciprocal lowering of terrorists between the United States and a host of countries,

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