Sir Niall Ferguson

So that does remind me of Nixon.

And part of what we see here is what Nixon did in 71, which is shock the allies.

You've got to shock the Europeans, and you also shock your Asian allies by saying things like, we're going to put tariffs on you, and we might do something with the dollar.

And you guys have to pay for your own defense.

That was all out of Nixon's playbook.

And I do think Trump has a debt to Nixon that doesn't get nearly enough recognition.

They had a relationship back in the 80s, and it was Nixon who encouraged Trump to think of politics.

Well, I don't think there's any doubt that the president has thought since the 1980s that you need to do a couple of things first.

to reduce the impact of foreign competition on American livelihoods, and particularly middle class and working class livelihoods.

One of them is to put up tariffs.

He's been out of consensus on this issue for close to half a century.

And the other is

that you force everybody else to take care of their own security and you stopped subsidizing it by providing umbrellas to other powers.

So I think that's right.

And I think when we're trying to understand what comes up next week, when a whole bunch of new tariffs are going to be imposed on American trading partners, you have to understand that Trump believes that tariffs aren't just a source of revenue, that he doesn't think that.

They will help to re-industrialize America.

and to reduce the trade deficit, which he regards as a sign of weakness.

And Trump has this very unorthodox economic theory.

An enormous trade deficit will somehow subsidize the rest of the world.

And if you're paying a significantly bigger share of the NATO budget than, say, the Germans, then you're subsidizing them too.