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BY THOMAS L. KNAPP

From early April to mid-May, U.S. trade policy went from the bizarre “Liberation Day” tariff schedule — “reciprocal” tariffs that weren’t reciprocal and wouldn’t have made sense if they had been — to U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcements of “major” trade agreements with the Chinese and British regimes.

“An incredible day for America as we deliver our first Fair, Open and Reciprocal Trade Deal,” Trump boasted of the U.K. agreement. “Something our past presidents never cared about.” The White House called the China deal “a win for the United States, demonstrating President Trump’s unparalleled expertise in securing deals that benefit the American people.”

Really, the Chinese “deal” seems to consist merely of both sides temporarily freezing U.S. “Liberation Day” tariff hikes and Chinese “retaliatory” measures, while the U.K. agreement doesn’t even do that, keeping the 10% “Liberation Day” tariff as a “floor” while reducing some other trade barriers in both directions.

The obvious question is whether Trump blinked after his tariff madness produced predictably damaging economic results for Americans and those Americans noticed, or whether this is another one of his head fakes and we can expect him to reverse himself yet again in the coming months, whining the whole time that everyone’s either just unfair, or doesn’t understand his deal-making genius, or both.

If past performance is indicative of future results, the latter seems more likely … and that continuing uncertainty, even more than the obvious and irrefutable stupidity of protective tariffs, is the problem.

To understand why, let’s get hypothetical.

You want to start a business — a grocery store, say — in a town. That involves building, buying or leasing a building, equipping it with shelves, freezers, cash registers, etc., hiring staff, and shipping inventory.

Now imagine that the government of the town has some strange policies. Zoning changes at random and retroactively. One month your store is in an area zoned “commercial” and you’re good. The next month it changes to “single-family residential” and you have to move.

The town’s sales taxes are also determined randomly — every week an official draws a number out of a hat. One week it’s 5% and most customers don’t complain too much. The next week it’s 50% and those customers drive to the next town to shop. Or maybe this week it’s 5% if the can of beans you’re selling comes from California, but 50% if it comes from Pennsylvania, and next week it’s 2% if the beans come from North Dakota but 27% if the beans come from Michigan.

You might still want to open a grocery store … but do you want to open a grocery store in that town, or just pick a town with stable, reliable policies that aren’t too different from the towns around it?

You know the answer, and so do those abroad thinking about whether it’s worth doing business in the U.S., or with U.S. customers. Until Trump settles on a trade policy — hopefully a better one, but at least a stable one — Americans will continue to get the short end of the economic stick.

(Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism. He lives and works in north central Florida.)