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Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good

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April 2, 2025

Trump, Tariffs and

the ‘Mar-a-Lago Accord’

On what he proclaimed a trade “Liberation Day” for the US, President Donald Trump announced sweeping new tariffs today. They amount to at least 10% on practically all goods imported into the US, with higher rates on goods from dozens of countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US, as CNN reports.
 
“Today we’re standing up for the American worker, and we are finally putting America first,” Trump said. Other countries are expected to retaliate with measures of their own. Markets have been skeptical of Trump’s ambitious tariff agenda and its wild swings.
 
These are the “reciprocal” tariffs Trump has teased. The idea has been to even out unbalanced trade relationships and retaliate not just against foreign tariffs but also against other countries’ taxes and other policies that Trump believes penalize the US and its exports. (Leading up to the announcement, Trump had taken aim at non-trade barriers like Europe’s VAT, a sales tax paid at steps along the value-adding chain of assembling and selling a finished good, as Axios’ Felix Salmon noted.) At the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Kimberly Clausing argues tariffs aren’t the right response. “Focusing on reciprocity as a justification for tariffs is misguided,” Clausing argues. “Countries’ tax policies are rarely discriminatory, and in many instances, foreign trade barriers are minor. Even when trade barriers abroad are larger than US barriers, new US tariffs will generate economic disruption and punish US consumers. While legal constraints may cause the Trump administration to cite reciprocity as a justification for tariffs, this is a flimsy rationale for a deeply misguided policy approach.”
 
It is still a matter of debate whether Trump is pursuing a realistic strategy. The president has consistently said he wants to rebuild America’s manufacturing economy and help US producers, disadvantaging competition from foreign imports. (Critics and mainstream economists have noted tariffs are likely to make goods more expensive for US consumers.) Trump has also said tariffs will raise revenue; that could open up fiscal room for other policies, like extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. Beyond that rationale, investors and economists have been speculating about a so-called “Mar-a-Lago Accord,” a catch phrase used in a tariff-supporting white paper written by White House Council of Economic Advisors chair Stephen Miran. In November, Miran wrote for his firm Hudson Bay Capital that the “root” of America’s trade imbalances “lies in persistent dollar overvaluation.”
 
In other words, some believe Trump’s strategy is to devalue the dollar.
 
The idea of the “Mar-a-Lago Accord” would be to “address the US current account and fiscal deficits without having to do the hard work of raising tax revenue or lowering spending,” explains Jenny Gordon of the Australia-based Lowy Institute. “Like the 1985 Plaza Accord, part of the proposed solution is to force the rest of the world to appreciate their currencies to improve US export competitiveness.” (China’s currency depreciation has drawn the ire of American trade hawks for years, as a weaker RMB makes Chinese exports more appealing to foreign buyers, whose currencies are worth more in terms of goods. The US dollar serves as the world’s reserve currency, but global growth is outpacing it, and resultant disruptions hurt US manufacturing and goods-trade balances, Miran argued in the white paper.)

Of the catchy name, Miran wrote: “As currency accords are typically named after resorts where they are negotiated, like Bretton Woods and Plaza, with some poetic license I’ll describe the potential agreement in the Trump Administration as others have done as the prospective ‘Mar-a-Lago Accord.’” Noting that Trump has viewed tariffs as means of extracting concessions, Miran argued Trump’s tariffs could be used to induce other countries, most notably Europe and China, to “strengthen their currencies” against the dollar.
 
The concept has its detractors. Reviving US production is about investment, too, the Lowy Institute’s Gordon writes, and to the extent that any US manufacturing revival is driven by money borrowed abroad, a weaker dollar is worse. Technological advancements were also responsible for the hollowing out of America’s industrial base, and tariffs won’t address them at all, so well-paid factory jobs may not return regardless, Gordon writes. And there are questions about the basic economics. At the Tax Foundation, Alan Cole writes that US tariffs make the dollar stronger, not weaker: “Tariffs create an anticipated scarcity of dollars—or at least, greater difficulty acquiring dollars—in expectation of imports falling and fewer dollars being exchanged for foreign currency. As a result, the theory goes, the dollar appreciates relative to other currencies.”

With Trump, Is Trade Personal?

Still, Trump’s harshest critics see little point in any of this. His tariffs and tariff threats aren’t even about economics, really, The Guardian argues in an editorial.
 
Trump “presents taxing foreign imports as a way to rebuild the American economy in favour of blue-collar workers left behind by free trade and globalization,” the paper writes. “Yet he plainly thinks that politics is not about truth or justice. It is about leverage and supremacy. … [T]wo things appear to be driving this. One is his self-styled image as the ultimate dealmaker; the man who can turn any situation to his advantage. The other is his view of politics as a means for structuring society to favour one group over another—not just economically, but in terms of legitimacy and who defines reality. Tariffs will probably be lifted if nations accede to Mr Trump’s wishes and, in doing so, reward politically useful constituencies, big tech allies or his wealthy donors. … What emerges is less trade policy than performance politics—where coercion, loyalty and theatre converge.”

Watch Fareed’s Take

For years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been trying to rebuild the tsarist empire, expanding Russia’s sphere of influence and fighting wars in Georgia and Ukraine. On Sunday’s GPS, Fareed argued that has put Putin on the wrong side of history—and now under the Trump administration, the United States may be joining that side.

Let Le Pen Run?

French far-right icon Marine Le Pen had gained ground on President Emmanuel Macron in France’s last presidential election, their second head-to-head contest. With Macron finishing up his final term before France holds another election in 2027, Le Pen was viewed as a solid candidate, particularly as far-right parties in Europe have made significant headway in recent years—and, in Italy, have secured the highest office.

Le Pen was dealt a setback Monday, when a French court found her guilty of embezzling EU funds by using them to pay political staffers. Le Pen slammed the ruling as political.
 
Even critics of Le Pen worry about the implications. Some have noted the resonance with Trump’s legal troubles in the US.
 
“This decision will reverberate across French politics and influence the battle of narratives over the state of democracy in the West,” write Celia Belin, Camille Lons and Pawel Zerka of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “It will further legitimise the already widespread claim—promoted by the US administration—that elites have taken over Western political systems and have fundamentally skewed it against the will of ordinary people. Populist forces on both sides of the Atlantic have plenty to gain. … Centrist political forces in France and beyond will face the difficult task of navigating Le Pen’s conviction. While defending the impartiality of the justice system and the rule of law, they also have to acknowledge it may add fuel to the Trumpist fire.”
 
Regardless of the grievances Le Pen’s electoral ban might reinforce, or the party it might advantage in doing so, to Tom Slater of Spiked this is about principle. “For true democrats, Le Pen’s politics are irrelevant,” Slater writes. “Whether or not she—or any politician—should get to lead France must be decided at the election, not in court. Voters are more than capable of rendering their verdict on her, her policies and her crimes—of judging whether her hard-right party’s ‘moderate’ makeover is legit and whether her conviction should rule her out of high office. That she supported the 2016 law that has now brought her candidacy down is also irrelevant. The democratic stakes are far too high to be crowded out by schadenfreude and howls of ‘hypocrisy.’”
 
The Economist agrees, writing: “[A]lthough blocking Ms Le Pen from running for president is perfectly legal, it risks undermining the legitimacy of the next election. … The danger of courts aggressively sentencing politicians is that both the law and the courts become seen as partisan. … Ms Le Pen should indeed be able to stand [for office] in 2027. Her appeal would ordinarily take up to two years to reach trial, but the court of appeal has wisely said that it will be decided by the summer of 2026. The court should shorten her suspension (other defendants got as little as a year), allowing her to re-enter the contest before the election. … In any event, Ms Le Pen will not get off easily: [in addition to the electoral ban] she must serve two years wearing an electronic tag (plus a two-year suspended sentence), and pay a heavy fine. That seems right: the aim should be to punish the offender without also punishing French democracy.”