Emirhan Kınataş

This analysis examines the Trump Administration’s drive to transform U.S. trade policy from multilateral liberalism to aggressive protectionism, the sharpest break with postwar economic orthodoxy in seven decades. Drawing on economic data, opinion research, and policy analysis, it argues that the shift constituted not a tactical adjustment but an ideological reorientation: Trade reconceived as an instrument of national assertion rather than mutual prosperity. Contrary to conventional expectations, the turn was driven by elite strategic calculation rather than popular demand, as American consumers consistently prioritized price over origin and showed little appetite for tariffs. The Trump-Vance coalition weaponized the real grievances of deindustrialization, recasting structural dislocation as moral betrayal requiring punitive remedy. A tariff escalation reaching levels unseen since the 1930s functioned less as an engine of industrial revival than as a symbol of restored sovereignty, its costs accepted as proof of resolve. The contest with China anchors this statecraft and rests on a durable bipartisan consensus. Herein lies the central paradox: the protectionist turn reproduces the elite, state-led character of the liberal order it repudiates, exposing continuity beneath rhetorical rupture.