This is what happens when you put an idiot in charge of the store, the store and everyone associated with it suffers . . . mightily. I speak, of course, of the twitter-in-chief, Donald Trump, whose latest proclamation on economic policy has the markets shaking and threatens to undermine a trade system that for decades has been responsible for fostering economic progress throughout the world. Now, the orange-headed buffoon wants to demolish that system and plunge the world back into a dog-eat-dog, tariff-walled trade system that was foundational to World War II.

He just has announced that he intends to slap tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. Before that he slapped tariffs on imports of solar panels and washing machines. As he said, it’s easy to slap on tariffs; unfortunately, it’s not a very bright way to level the economic playing field.

Assessing tariffs on imported goods may in the short run help some domestic manufacturers, but longer term such an action is self-defeating. Take for instance, solar panels. The Chinese manufacture close to 90 percent of the solar panels in the world. How do they do this? Lower labor costs for one, but principally by subsidizing their solar panel manufacturers. Is this fair? No, but combatting that by slapping tariffs on the imports of solar panels doesn’t really help American manufacturers of the solar panels because they produce such a small fraction of the world supply to begin with. Instead, what it does is raise the cost of solar panels in the United States and stunt consumer demand for the product. The result: a nascent solar power industry, which includes more than just the manufacture of solar panels, withers. Will this hurt the Chinese? Not really. They will just intensify their sale of solar panels to other countries that are working as fast as they can to build up their own solar industries. The United States solar industry will be left in the economic dust of the rest of the world and will be hard pressed to recover and quite possibly never be competitive.

Similarly, slapping tariffs on steel and aluminum imports may help higher-cost domestic suppliers of the products, but it will raise the cost of products that use steel and aluminum in the manufacture of their products, such as automobiles, the construction industry, semi-conductors, etc. Who pays the price ultimately for these tariffs? The consumers, of course.

More importantly, however, using tariffs as trade policy undermines the trade system that for decades was so assiduously developed and nurtured by the United States following World War II through the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) process. Through this process the system of tariffs that the world followed prior to World War II and pushed the Japanese to wage war on the United States, was gradually dismantled, and a system of tariff controls was instituted that helped lower tariffs worldwide and foster greater trade and economic development.

This is not to say there were not tariffs, but there was a system in place for countries to air their differences and to find mutually agreeable tariff and trade arrangements to the benefit of all. Unilaterally slapping tariffs on imports to help domestic industries that were not very competitive to begin with undermines the GATT system and ushers the world back into one of cut-throat competition and tariff walls.

Does this mean that the United States or any country for that matter should just sit back and let its domestic industries die on the vine and not do anything to protect them? Absolutely not, but hiking tariffs is a simplistic solution, in other words, no solution, to a much more complicated problem. There is a system in place for dealing with countries, such as China, whose governmental policies unfairly help their manufacturers at the expense of foreign manufacturers. It should be used. In the meantime, governments can find other ways to help their industries without having a deleterious down line effect on other segments of their economies tied to their industries.

First of all, governments should take a serious look at their domestic industries to determine what position they occupy in the overall economy and to what extent they possess a natural comparative advantage over foreign manufacturers. If a foreign manufacturer has a natural comparative advantage over domestic manufacturers and the industry does not represent a significant share in the economy of the country, i.e., represents a small share of GDP and employs a small percentage of the labor force, does it make sense to hike tariffs just for its benefit that will hurt associated industries and the economy as a whole? Of course, not. But that is exactly what Mr. Trump is doing.

Better to provide tax incentives and similar tools that in effect amount to a subsidy to bolster the industry and to help make it more competitive domestically and internationally. Alternatively, or additionally, the government should be fostering policies such as tax incentives for those industries that do occupy significant percentages of the GDP and employ large segments of the population to make them stronger and even more competitive.

Riding a dying horse gets one nowhere except stranded when the horse dies, which is what Mr. Trump has been doing by backing the coal industry at the expense of robust and growing industries such as solar and wind power, which are occupying an ever-growing share of the economy and the labor force.

One wonders who is advising Mr. Trump on his economic policies, or is he listening solely to the voices in his head and going with his infamous “intuition”? It would seem the latter to be the case, which is unfortunate because his policies, if one can even call them that, are only going to cause suffering in the United States store long after he has departed the scene.