Daniel Kurtzleben

I mean, he constantly frames tariffs as the thing that will make the American economy great.

He really talks about them as a fix for all sorts of economic problems of bringing in revenue, increasing foreign investment.

Now, those promises haven't all borne out.

He said, for example, that tariffs would shrink the trade deficit.

The latest data shows that that really hasn't happened.

But you're right.

He likes tariffs for bigger reasons.

He liked to talk about tariffs as a way of casting himself as this master tough negotiator.

Here he was talking to Fox Business's Larry Kudlow this month.

And besides that, tariffs have just given Trump enormous power.

He had claimed he had the ability to impose tariffs when he wanted, at what level he wanted.

And as the head of an economic superpower, that gave Trump massive leverage over other countries.

And he used that to make trade deals on pharmaceutical pricing, even for diplomacy.

And now he doesn't necessarily have that same power anymore.

Well, he said that first off, he's signing an executive order to impose a 10 percent global tariff under a different law, one the Supreme Court didn't talk about.

It's called Section 122 for short.

It allows the president to impose tariffs on imports for up to 150 days.

And after that point, Congress is required to vote on it.

But in addition, some of the tariffs he's already imposed will still be sticking around.

Those are called Section 232 tariffs.