A News Agency

Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute in Washington and a former policymaker at the Bank of England, spoke to the Guardian following his article in the journal Foreign Affairs.

Posen said Trump’s tactics “echo those of Presidents Johnson and Nixon during the Vietnam War,” who “couldn’t believe they wouldn’t win by simply escalating attacks” and were “unwilling to negotiate a real peace.”

He called Trump and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent “deeply mistaken” in defending high tariffs on China, accusing them of boasting about America’s self-inflicted damage and how it would supposedly lead to victory over China.

Many economists have accused White House advisors of misunderstanding how international trade works and how industries sometimes rely on cross-border production to access cheaper labor or skills and technologies unavailable domestically.

Volatile financial markets, which had struggled all week to price the tariff war, were shaken on Friday after China raised tariffs on U.S. goods from 84% to 125%, and the U.S. responded by raising the total to 145%.