The Trump Tariff Insanity

Our mad president announced his long-awaited tariffs on foreign goods this week like he was unveiling a new television program. He hosted an event in the White House rose garden with a speech and a large spreadsheet that listed the tariffs that will be implemented across the board against every country in the world. The tariffs range from 10% to 60% with the most notable being 37% against China and 20% against European Union countries. He called the event “Liberation Day.” Day is night. Up is down. Poor is rich.

No one seems to know why he is doing it. His sycophantic experts spew drivel about how the tariffs will protect American jobs and encourage citizens of the U.S. and the world to “buy American.” Retaliatory tariffs will undoubtedly be implemented by the rest of the world.

Everything will cost more for no reason.

Trump must dominate. Domination is the only thing he can feel. The U.S. economy has been the envy of the world coming out of Covid, with growth rates that dwarf the EU. Stocks have hit records. Real wages have increased, even for the average worker, something that hasn’t happened consistently since before the “trickle-down” policies of the Reagan administration.

Somewhere some right-wing Svengali has inserted his conspiracy into Trump’s childlike brain that America is being ripped off by other countries that use tariffs to protect their industries to buy goods cheaply from the U.S. Explaining that trade is hugely beneficial to a mature complex economy like America’s is pointless with MAGA’s revenge-addled minds. Everything is grievance. Everything is unfairness. 

Too—much of the American economy is based not on goods, but services. Many countries buy our services in addition to our goods, which doesn’t show up in the trade calculations, but they get punished just the same. Trump’s political gift is being able to distill a minor nuisance into a digestible point of anger for the man on the street and get him impassioned enough to base his vote on grievance. Every molehill MAGA sees becomes a mountain. MAGA has no perspective. MAGA destroys, lies, and promotes the hell out of it.

Democrats have become so dependent on bailing America out of Republican destruction to the point that the Democratic party has no real agenda of its own. Besides, some atavistic republican tropes, like protecting bankers and investors have benefited the top rung of Democrats as well as Republicans. There was a time in the past when Democrats wanted to tear it all down and rebuild a more equitable America, but the leadership of the party has been bought off by the hagiography of moderation and common sense. The problem is that when you’re negotiating with a madman, finding common ground is likely to be insane.

Every Democratic victory is Pyrrhic. Senator Cory Booker filibusters against a bill in the Senate for 25 hours, the longest duration of that feat in history, even longer than racist Strom Thurmond’s attempt to block the Civil Rights Act of 1957. When Booker finished, though, the bill sailed through on the Republican majority.  Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Bernie Sanders host a road show for Democrats and boast the largest crowds ever in the western states where they appear. Then RFK Jr dismantles Health and Human Services.

This is democracy, you say. The will of the majority is being heard. But the most salient point about American constitutional Democracy is that while the majority rules, the minority has rights, too, and no one can take away those rights. So if the majority party wants to change a policy, how that change affects the minority is crucial. No change should burn it all down. Change should be logical, reasoned, debated, gradual. Destruction isn’t democracy. It’s nihilism.

So America enters a new era. The era of nationalism. The era of fear. The confident America that boldly created and stood tall as it gazed into a future that it didn’t fear, but instead helped to shape, is a wisp of itself. Trump’s America is rapacious, greedy, grabbing at anything it can, driven by imposter syndrome, as if it were mistakenly invited to a party that it will never enjoy again, so it is taking all the party favors, the catering trays, and the furniture to boot. 

Prior to the re-election of America’s worst president, I might have said that America is better than that, and we will once again take our place as the shining city on the hill. But why shine on a hill when you can forage in a dumpster? Can you believe the chumps threw all this free stuff away?