We now have the first attempt by the White House—specifically by Steve Miran, the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers—to justify the tariffs based on economic "theory", and it's without a doubt the most dishonest piece of economic reading that's I've ever had the misfortune to lay my eyes upon.
The gist of Miran's argument is to reposition the global reserve currency status of the dollar not as an exorbitant privilege (as erstwhile French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing once characterized it), but as somehow a "burden" that the rest of the world needs to compensate the US for bearing.
As Miran explains it, having the dollar as a reserve currency "has caused persistent currency distortions and contributed, along with other countries’ unfair barriers to trade, to unsustainable trade deficits" which "have decimated our manufacturing sector."
So he wants to give up the reserve currency status of the dollar, right? Wrong. He wants to have it both ways.
He says that America's "financial dominance cannot be taken for granted; and the Trump Administration is determined to preserve [it]" but this same financial dominance "comes at a cost" and "other nations" need to pay for it.
And he means this literally. He made a list of what exactly he means by "burden sharing" and one of the forms it can take is countries "simply writ[ing] checks to Treasury that help us finance global public goods."
Let's pause a moment here to contemplate the sheer insanity of this: the U.S. is literally suggesting that countries should mail checks to the US Treasury as tribute for the 'privilege' of maintaining the dollar as a global reserve currency, when it is this very reserve status of the dollar that is the cornerstone of US power.
It's the equivalent of Samson asking everyone to pay him to keep his hair.