Can Trump use tariffs for different and conflicting goals?

President Donald Trump plans to use tariffs in the coming days to pursue a range of disparate and sometimes conflicting goals, from pressuring neighboring countries on immigration and boosting domestic manufacturing to penalizing trade partners for their own tariffs. 

Critics, including longtime free-market economists and trade experts, have criticized Trump’s tariff plans as incoherent and economically damaging. 

Trump officials and allies, though, argue that there is no contradiction in his agenda. They portray tariffs as an economic multitool knife that can be used for many purposes. 

“I think that the president’s agenda is one of the boldest and most-needed pro-America agendas in decades,” said Nick Iacovella, executive vice president of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, an outside group that has backed Trump’s tariffs. “He’s exactly right to recognize that tariffs are an important tool to accomplish the vision that he has.”