For Trump and his allies, what’s happening now is necessary “medicine.” Trump views global trade in zero-sum terms: He appears to think trade deficits are a sign of American weakness (rather than, say, a reflection of the power of the U.S. consumer). He believes U.S. purchases of foreign goods are “subsidies” to other countries with money that should be spent at home. And he sees tariffs as a tool to raise funds and bring back manufacturing to the hollowed-out industrial heartlands of the United States.
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Since the 19th century, an economic policy geared towards current account surpluses and protectionist employment stabilization has been referred to as neo-mercantilism.
wikipedia
Mercantilism promotes government regulation of a nation's economy for the purpose of augmenting and bolstering state power at the expense of rival national powers. High tariffs, especially on manufactured goods, were almost universally a feature of mercantilist policy.[2] Before it fell into decline, mercantilism was dominant in modernized parts of Europe and some areas in Africa from the 16th to the 19th centuries, a period of proto-industrialization.[3] Some commentators argue that it is still practised in the economies of industrializing countries[4] in the form of economic interventionism.[5][6][7][8][9]
wikipedia ...Trump and Musk explicitly see Milei’s transformation of Argentina as an example to follow. In a matter of months, Milei has slashed government ministries from 18 to eight, dispensed with state efforts to support gender equality and human rights, axed tens of thousands of federal workers, curtailed state spending and reduced inflation. The scale and mercilessness of Milei’s approach inspired Trump’s team. “After conversations with Javier,” Federico Sturzenegger, Argentina’s minister of deregulation, told Schmidt, Musk “realized that there was an opportunity for the state to do this kind of work.”