LZ Granderson: Trump's tariff war is based on false notions about the U.S. economy

President Trump declared that it was “Liberation Day’s economic Declaration of Independence now, says Julian Zelizer.

Zelizer: The president seems to believe that international trade is a zero-sum game.

He says that the American economy has been a giant failure for the last 40 years, but that is simply not true.

The White House quietly put out a fact sheet that read: These tariffs will remain in effect until such a time as President Trump determines that the threat posed by the trade deficit and underlying nonreciprocal treatment is satisfied, resolved, or mitigated.

Trump administration is likely to try and leverage headlines out of foreign nations saying they’re going to invest in America to the tune of some billions of dollars before lowering the tariff rates again.