Over the past week and a half, the Trump administration has escalated the presidentā€™s trade war with Canada by blowing up trade negotiations and imposing 50% tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian exports, leading Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to slap retaliatory tariffs on a wide range of American products.

Meanwhile, Trump has also escalated his economic war with Iran in the apparent hope that it will succeed where U.S. air strikes have failed. On Monday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Operation Economic Outcast, a new pressure campaign he likened to ā€œeconomic D-Dayā€ that would impose sanctions not only on Iran but on other countries and institutions that do business with it.

These are two very different conflicts with very different countries, but both escalations are likely to fail in similar ways, for similar reasons.

And therein lies the trouble for Trumpā€™s misadventures: In both the trade war and the real war, his adversaries are prepared to hang on for far longer.

Read Why Trump Wonā€™t Win His New Economic Wars at The Intelligencer

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