What did Donald Trump do today?

UPDATE: Shortly after this was posted, the Trump administration announced that the "Government of Colombia has agreed to all of President Trump’s terms, including the unrestricted acceptance of all illegal aliens from Colombia returned from the United States, including on U.S. military aircraft, without limitation or delay." As a result, the statement said, the tariffs and other sanctions would not go into effect. In reality, what appears to have happened is that it was Trump who yielded to the single demand of Colombia's government, which is that deportees be treated humanely and, among other things, not put in leg shackles.

He got mad at an ally and imposed a punitive tariff that will raise grocery prices for Americans.

While Trump is not the president that has deported the most people—that would be President Biden, whom Trump accused of being soft on immigration—he has made appearing to be tough on undocumented immigrants a keystone of his presidency. During his first term, Trump talked endlessly about his new border fence, which was almost comically easy for illegal border-crossers to defeat, but got almost none of it built. 

To take a more recent example, ICE conducted an unusual raid in Chicago today, with TV celebrity therapist "Doctor Phil" McGraw embedded to draw attention to it. Contrary to what McGraw appeared to be hoping for, however, there have been no reports of armed gangs of undocumented workers getting into firefights with ICE agents.

Normally, ICE uses commercial charter flights to return deportees to their countries of origin. This process is uncontroversial. Trump, however, has insisted on using military planes to deliver deportees. Mexico and Colombia have refused these flights, citing concerns about the treatment of deportees in military custody and issues of national sovereignty. Colombia, in particular, objected to their citizens being put in shackles.

Each such military flight costs roughly $800,000, while an equivalent number of charter flights costs about $100,000 or one-eighth as much.

Today, Trump lashed out at Colombia, saying that he would impose an immediate 25% tariff on Colombian products, and raise it to 50% after a week. As always, this tax on consumer goods Americans want to buy would be passed along to them in the form of higher prices.

Colombia is the second-largest exporter of coffee to the United States. 73% of Americans drink coffee every day. Prices are already at record highs due to bad weather in Brazil. The United States grows only a tiny amount of coffee domestically, in Hawai'i.

Coffee isn't the only breakfast item Trump has impacted in his first week back in office. Trump campaigned on bringing down "the price of eggs," which have recently hit record highs due as egg producers deal with the H5N1 "bird flu." The public health agencies that normally help deal with this sort of thing are under a Trump-ordered communications blackout, and the National Institutes for Health has had its grants frozen and its clinical trials halted. 

Colombian President Gustavo Petro immediately promised retaliatory tariffs and noted that there are more than 15,000 Americans living without documents in the United States—but not being treated as criminals or being taken into Colombian military custody.

Why does this matter?

• A foreign policy that only hurts Americans is bad American foreign policy.

• Other countries are not powerless, even if the President of the United States wishes they were.

• There is a difference between looking tough and getting results.