What do you mean? We can't afford to finance their security anymore. Nor can we afford their protective tariffs against our goods. Why can't we afford it? Because we're running $1.8T budget deficit, and paying $1T+ in interest on our debt next year. Because each man, woman and child in the US already owes $100K+ straight from birth. Do you just want to keep adding to that number hoping that we'll never turn into Zimbabwe?
That's the trouble with "barrier" tariffs and weighted tariff calculations. E.g. a lot of US agricultural products are subject to up to 50% tariff in the EU, so the US is simply unable to sell them there in significant quantity. What do you get as a result of a weighted tariff calculation? That's right, you get "low tariff". Japan is also interesting. It imposes insane tariffs (several hundred percent) on some US agricultural goods, but 0% on US cars. Why 0% on cars? Because they are able to basically disallow import of US cars through regulation.
There's also another aspect, beyond tariffs. In a very real sense, we're paying for the security of EU, Japan, and Canada. Why aren't they buying more of our goods or energy? How long can we foot the bill of over 2/3rds of NATO defense spending, _and_ run $900B+ trade deficits? To what end are we funding the security of developed countries, most of which are half across the world, who could fund it on their own? Why are they _still_ buying Russian oil and gas while we do all that? The whole situation is idiotic.
Trump basically has two levers when it comes to trade deficits: boost exports, and reduce imports. Of these he only directly controls the latter, but he's trying to pull both. And crash the treasury yields at the same time.
I'd like to eventually see the "import certificate" system that Buffett proposed in the 2003 article I linked above. It's a more free-market solution which does not pipe revenue through US government where a large chunk (or all) of it will disappear without ever reaching the exporters.
