Trump's tariff turnarounds are key to his strategy — but it may not pay off in the long term, supply chain and conflict resolution scholars say

Katie Balevic,Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert

Fri, Mar 7, 2025, 5:21 AM 6 min read

• President Donald Trump on Thursday again delayed enforcing tariffs on Canada and Mexico by a month.

• The president's flip-flopping on international trade has caused price hikes and diplomatic friction.

• Supply chain scholars say economic uncertainty is a feature of Trump's trade policy, not a bug.

President Donald Trump announced on Thursday that his 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada would be delayed another month, once again backtracking on his aggressive international trade policy proposals.

Trump's repeated reversals are key to his economic strategy, though they may not pay off in the long term as they erode relationships with the nation's allies, supply chain and conflict resolution scholars told Business Insider.

The continued flip-flopping has left the US economy with a sense of whiplash. Businesses and markets have to keep up with the latest policies amid a budding trade war, while uncertainty in the world's biggest economy makes waves across the rest of the globe.

The tariff tension between the North American trade partners is creating diplomatic friction between the US and its allies, in addition to driving cross-industry cost increases and consumer price hikes, Nick Vyas, the founding director of the University of Southern California's Randall R. Kendrick Global Supply Chain Institute, told Business Insider.

He said that's a feature of Trump's trade policy, not a bug.

"Everyone has to understand that you're on the long ride here with this jolt, this is not just turbulence for a few seconds," Vyas said.

Since Trump prides himself on being a master dealmaker, Vyas said the president seems to believe he'll be able to achieve his policy goals by increasing the pressure on Canada and Mexico — and that means keeping each country's leader off balance at the negotiating table.

"It all fits into his America First strategy," Vyas said. "But I think we're going to have to make sure that we don't alienate our allies."

While his tariff threats may be an attempt to strengthen the US' economic standing, Trump's repeated backtracking may not help the implementation of his other policy priorities in the long term, Andrea Schneider, the director of the Kukin Program for Conflict Resolution at the Cardozo School of Law, told BI.

"When you threaten and then continue to walk things back, obviously, the threat loses its power," Schneider said. "Whatever strategy message we're trying to send is confusing and is less strong because of it."