This is a pro-Trump explication of his trade policy, by a woman who describes herself as a “MAGA lefty.” She explains that “Trump’s pro-worker, anti-war, socially moderate America First agenda was the Democrats’ platform for a century. Now it’s MAGA.” She has a point: we seem to be living in a parallel universe in which Dick Gephardt has been elected president:
Former Democrat Batya Ungar-Sargon CALLS OUT Wall Street and PERFECTLY explains President Trump’s tariff policies.
Leaves the entire panel SPEECHLESS. Just watch:
"The rich are punishing Trump for siding with the neglected American working class.”
pic.twitter.com/B1On5VMKEm— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) April 3, 2025
I think that Trump is trying to re-create the America of the 1950s and 1960s, a nation in which thousands of auto workers and steel workers carried lunch buckets to factories and made solid livings.
But do Trump’s tariff policies actually make any sense? The financial markets obviously don’t think so. Virtually no foreign observers think so. Hans Bader makes the case against the tariffs. I will quote just part of it; the original is replete with links:
Today, President Trump imposed hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs on the countries of the world, that vary enormously from nation to nation. He calls them “reciprocal” tariffs, but they aren’t reciprocal at all. Trump increased tariffs even on friendly countries that had lower tariffs than we do, which is the very opposite of reciprocity. He imposed 10% tariffs even on countries that we have a trade surplus with, like Australia — which has fewer trade barriers than America does, and has some of the lowest tariffs on Earth.
Trump’s tariffs are kinder to countries that are mean to us than to countries that are kind to us. Protectionist Brazil, which has a left-wing president, was slapped with a mere 10% tariff, while America’s ally South Korea, which has a free-trade treaty with the U.S., was slapped with a harsh 25% tariff. Vietnam, 84% of whose people liked America, has been slapped with a harsh 46% tariff. That big tariff will undermine our foreign policy by making it harder to contain China by moving production from China to its neighbor, Vietnam. The European Union has been slapped with a 20% tariff, while friendly Switzerland has been hit by a 31% tariff and Japan has been hit by a 24% tariff.
As journalist Josh Barro explains, “The tariffs are not reciprocal — the ‘reciprocal’ rates are based on trade deficits, not tariffs (or non-tariff trade barriers), *and* then tariffs are even imposed on countries with which we have a trade surplus. News outlets should not accept the ‘reciprocal’ branding.”
This is an important point. The administration tries to convey the impression that the tariffs are “reciprocal” in the normal sense of the word, but they aren’t. They come from a calculation based not on another country’s tariffs on our goods, but on trade deficits–and even then, are not consistently applied.
The penguins are getting a lot of laughs:
The tariffs also are imposed on territories that have done nothing to the U.S. “Trump’s tariffs target the uninhabited Heard and McDonald Islands,” notes Mike Baker of the New York Times. And Trump imposed a tariff increase on an island that contains a key U.S. military base. “He has introduced a 10% tariff on the British Indian Ocean Territory. The only inhabited island there is Diego Garcia, home to US service personnel. Trump has put a tariff on a U.S. military base.”
But this is worse:
“Israel eliminated tariffs on US imports and Trump still slapped it with a 17% tariff,” notes Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute. Heritage Foundation data shows “there are 68 countries with a higher Trade Freedom Score than the US,” but they got slapped with tariffs, too, despite having fewer trade barriers than America.
Trump’s heart may be in the right place, but his tariff policy is utterly incoherent and can only be destructive. Let’s hope he uses it as a starting point for negotiation, as he did in 2017, and gets himself out from under this albatross. If he doesn’t, the great work his administration has done in other areas, most notably the border and government waste and corruption, will be at risk.
