A few hours before President Donald Trump slapped huge new tariffs on nearly all imports to the United States, Israel preemptively dropped all its tariffs on American goods. That's what some of Trump's defenders say is the goal of this whole madcap scheme: to get foreign countries to lower their barriers to American exports.

The Israeli government, a day before Donald Trump's Wednesday decision, cancelled all tariffs on imports from the United States. Despite this, the US President imposed 17 per cent retaliatory tariffs.