Trump's Tariffs

 

People have known all along that Trump’s ideas on trade were bad. Now we are getting to see how bad. His tariffs will create more price inflation for Americans, annoy America’s allies (and perhaps alienate some of them), damage American exporters, harm innocent people around the world dependent on trade for their livelihoods, and probably cause a recession and a bad stock market. Other than that, they are just a massive tax increase on Americans delivered by the party that claims to believe in keeping taxes low. (His people are claiming between six hundred and eight hundred billion dollars a year, none paid by the man behind the tree.) I hope his sycophants are right in claiming that they are a ploy to get other nations to cut their tariffs, but I doubt it. Besides being deeply economically ignorant, I think he and his supporters are also motivated in this by a general crude nativism that shows up in some of their other policies and desires. If this goes on, we all may be paying a big price for showing them durn furriners who the big dog is.

There is a useful aspect to all this though. With Republican politicians suddenly turning back flips over a tax increase, it can be a useful lesson to people on just how phony and unprincipled these public servants are.