After decades of trade liberalisation and falling tariff levels, tariffs have re-emerged as a central instrument of US trade policy. This paper argues that the dramatic escalation of tariffs under the second Trump administration marks not merely a revival of protectionism, but a qualitative shift towards the systematic use of tariffs as a tool of geopolitical strategy. Moving beyond conventional political economy explanations, the paper analyses the resurgence of US tariffs through an international relations (IR) lens, employing the levels-of-analysis framework: at the systemic level, within the context of intensifying great-power rivalry between the United States and China; at the state level, with major liberal democracies experiencing rising anti-globalisation sentiment and economic nationalism; and at the individual level, with President Donald Trump’s long-standing ideological commitment to tariffs and unilateral economic statecraft dramatically expanding the use of tariffs. The paper concludes that while systemic and state-level forces create a permissive environment for the return of tariffs, individual leadership agency is essential to explain the scale and geopolitical ambition of contemporary US tariff policy. However, higher tariffs are likely to persist even beyond the Trump era.
Robert Falkner (Thu,) studied this question.