There’s a reason why Donald Trump loves tariffs—and it has nothing to do with economics. 

It has everything to do with fear.     

On January 20, 2025, his first day in office, he announced that he would impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico starting February 1. 

He could have opened well-intentioned negotiations with Canada and Mexico over what he considered an unfair trade imbalance. But he sees conciliation as a sign of weakness. 

Exactly as Adolf Hitler did. 

Robert Payne, author of the bestselling biography, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler (1973), described Hitler’s—and Trump’s—“negotiating” style thus: 

“He was incapable of bargaining. He was like a man who goes up to a fruit peddler and threatens to blow his brains out if he does not sell his applies at the lowest possible price.”

A similar example of his aggressiveness occurred during his first administration.

On July 14, 2019, Trump unleashed a brutal Twitter attack on four Democratic members of the House of Representatives who had harshly criticized his anti-immigration policies:

The Democrats—all female, and all non-white—were:

• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York;
• Rashida Tlaib of Michigan;
• Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and
• Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.

Of the Congresswomen that Trump singled out:

• Cortez was born in New York City.
• Tlaib was born in Detroit, Michigan. 
• Pressley was born in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Only Omar was born outside the United States—in Somalia. And she became an American citizen in 2000 when she was 17 years old. 

Critics assailed Trump as racist for implying that these women were not United States citizens. 

Moreover, as members of Congress, they had a legal right to declare “how our government is to be run.” House and Senate Republicans had vigorously—and often viciously—asserted that right during the Presidency of Barack Obama.

Donald Trump

Ocasio-Cortez quickly struck back on Twitter on the same day: “You are angry because you don’t believe in an America where I represent New York 14, where the good people of Minnesota elected @IlhanMN, where @RashidaTlaib fights for Michigan families, where @AyannaPressley champions little girls in Boston.

“You are angry because you can’t conceive of an America that includes us. You rely on a frightened America for your plunder.

“You won’t accept a nation that sees healthcare as a right or education as a #1 priority, especially where we’re the ones fighting for it. Yet here we are.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

But then followed the most significant part of Cortez’ reply:

“But you know what’s the rub of it all, Mr. President? On top of not accepting an America that elected us, you cannot accept that we don’t fear you, either.

“You can’t accept that we will call your bluff & offer a positive vision for this country. And that’s what makes you seethe.”

For all his adult life, Donald Trump—as a businessman, Presidential candidate and twice-elected President—has trafficked in bribery and coercion. First bribery: 

• Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (now United States Attorney General) personally solicited a political contribution from Donald Trump around the same time her office deliberated joining an investigation of alleged fraud at Trump University and its affiliates.
• After Bondi dropped the Trump University case, he wrote her a $25,000 check for her re-election campaign. The money came from the Donald J. Trump Foundation.
• Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton moved to muzzle a former state regulator who says he was ordered in 2010 to drop a fraud investigation into Trump University for political reasons.
• Paxton’s office issued a cease and desist letter to former Deputy Chief of Consumer Protection John Owens after he made public copies of a 14-page internal summary of the state’s case against Donald Trump for scamming millions from students of his now-defunct real estate seminar.
• After the Texas case was dropped, Trump cut a $35,000 check to the gubernatorial campaign of then-attorney general and now Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

• Throughout his career as a businessman, Trump forced his employees to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements, threatening them with lawsuits if they revealed secrets of his greed and/or criminality.
• In 2016. USA Today found that Trump was involved in over 3,500 lawsuits during the previous 30 years: “At least 60 lawsuits, along with hundreds of liens, judgments, and other government filings” were from contractors claiming they got stiffed.
• On March 16, 2016, as a Republican Presidential candidate, Trump warned Republicans that if he didn’t win the GOP nomination in July, his supporters would literally riot: “I think you’d have riots. I think you would see problems like you’ve never seen before. I think bad things would happen, I really do. I wouldn’t lead it, but I think bad things would happen.”
• An NBC reporter summed it up as: “The message to Republicans was clear: ‘Nice convention you got there. Shame if something happened to it.'”
• Speaking with Bob Woodward, the legendary Washington Post investigative reporter, Trump confessed: “Real power is—I don’t even want to use the word—fear.”
• During his Presidential campaign he encouraged Right-wing thugs to attack dissenters at his rallies, even claiming he would pay their legal expenses (which he didn’t). 

But when he has confronted men and women who can’t be bribed or intimidated, Trump has reacted with rage and desperation.