Donald Trump wants to impose a 10% tariff. Here’s what happened when Nixon tried the same thing.

It was Aug. 15, 1971, and then-President Richard Nixon delivered an address to the nation to lay out a new economic approach for a country beset by economic worries and challenges to the US dollar. A key prong of his plan was an “import surcharge” — in effect a new tariff — of 10% across America’s trading relationships to prop up US business in the face of what Nixon called unfair exchange rates. “This import tax is a temporary action, it isn’t directed against any other country,” Nixon said. “When the unfair treatment is ended, the import tax will end…