npr:

President Trump escalated the trade fight with China this week, saying he will steeply increase tariffs on Chinese products this Friday.

But while the White House projects a unified front in favor of wielding tariffs as a weapon against China, it wasn’t always this way.

Early in Trump’s presidency, close advisers fought bitterly over whether tariffs would help — or devastate — the U.S. economy, those advisers told NPR and the PBS show Frontline.

“If you take all the other nastiness on the things like the Paris accord and the [Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement] … roll it up and put it to the factor of 10, they don’t compare to these weekly nasty trade meetings,” said Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist.

“These arguments would get quite personal,” Bannon added.

And the disagreements weren’t just behind closed doors.

“They were having fights in front of the Chinese delegation, which is like a cardinal sin of negotiating,” says Susan Thornton, former acting assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs.

As for the president, he has long railed against China and its trade relationship with the United States, calling the U.S.-China trade deficit “the greatest theft in the history of the world.” On the campaign trail, he frequently offered tariffs as a way to rebalance trade with China and revive American manufacturing jobs.

Inside The White House’s Bitter Fight Over China

Photo: Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images