Larry Kudlow says Trump is a 'free trader' despite record-high tariffs

Former White House economic council director Larry Kudlow told Post columnist Miranda Devine on the "Pod Force One" podcast that President Donald Trump is fundamentally a "free trader" and an "internationalist," a characterization at odds with the administration's recent move to lift tariffs to levels not seen in more than a century.

Kudlow, who led the National Economic Council from April 2018 through the end of Trump's first term, said in the interview that his long conversations with the president convinced him Trump seeks a world with minimal trade barriers. "Donald Trump is a free trader. He is," Kudlow said. "Fundamentally, he's an internationalist, first of all. Always did business around the world. This isolationist stuff is just completely wrong, as we've seen. But on trade, fundamentally, he would like a world of zero tariffs or equally low tariffs, ending non-tariff barriers and various government subsidies."

Kudlow acknowledged that his own views shifted after studying how other countries apply trade barriers. He credited former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer with showing him the scale of tariff differentials across markets such as India and China, saying, "I had a sort of right-mainstream free trade view, but I didn't know much about trade, and the differentials were enormous." Kudlow, now a Fox Business host, said the United States has not operated in a truly free-trade world for decades.

The comments come as the Trump administration, months into a second term, has used tariffs aggressively. Trump campaigned in 2024 praising tariffs, calling the word "tariff" "the most beautiful word in the dictionary," and has since overseen tariff increases that analysts and administration critics say are the highest in more than a century.

Kudlow argued that the administration's strategy has yet to trigger large-scale global retaliation and portrayed the U.S. economy as a bargaining advantage. "This global trade war retaliation never happened," he said. "Instead of flocking to China, they flocked to the United States. And our trump card here was always our massive economy. Not just our consumer economy, but our massive economy. And Trump knew that."

He told Devine that the administration reached preliminary trade-deal frameworks with many major trading partners over the summer, while negotiations with China and India remain ongoing. Kudlow said the trade picture will evolve over time and acknowledged friction ahead: "It'll change. It'll go up, it'll go down. Sometimes there'll be tariffs, sometimes there won't be, but it'll be much improved. It's going to take a while, and as I say there'll be bumps on the road, but he's well on his way to a big victory."

Kudlow's remarks underscore a broader debate within conservative economic circles over protectionism and free trade. Traditional conservative orthodoxy favors lower tariffs and fewer trade barriers, but advocates of tougher measures have argued they are necessary to address perceived unfair practices by trading partners. Kudlow said the post-World War II lull in trade barriers was short-lived and that the global trading system has been "broken for decades and decades," a diagnosis he said informed his more recent policy outlook.

The interview adds to public discussion about the administration's trade policy objectives and its potential economic consequences, including effects on businesses that rely on cross-border supply chains and on broader market access for U.S. exporters. Kudlow's perspective reflects both his past advocacy for free trade and his more recent emphasis on confronting what he described as asymmetric barriers imposed by other countries.