Harris Should Challenge Trump on Trade and Tariffs: Editorial

Vice President Kamala Harris has criticized former President Donald Trump’s plan to put a 20% tariff on all imports as a “national sales tax.” That’s a poor way to characterize the idea, but she was certainly right to attack it. Such tariffs would raise prices, provoke retaliation, hobble the economy and impose especially heavy costs on the lower-paid, who’d be least able to bear them.

Between now and the election, Harris should confront this issue more forcefully — a tactical challenge, to be sure, but worth the risk. A clearer renunciation of Trumpist thinking on trade is overdue.

For the past ...