Tariffs Are a Declaration of War Against U.S. Consumers Who Don't 'Buy American'

on Dec 12, 2024

SAN DIEGO -- The liberal media will spend the next four years criticizing everything that President-elect Donald Trump says and does.

That's not fair. But, very often, the criticism will be justified.

Trump and his underachieving cabinet of misfit toys are not about to let the fact that they don't understand certain topics -- national defense, world affairs, basic economics, the benefits of immigration, etc. -- stop them from mucking around in those spaces.

The members of the new administration don't know much about history. Trump's cabinet picks are throwbacks to the Vietnam War-era and an operational philosophy that sometimes -- as explained by Army Lt. William L. Calley Jr., who led the U.S. soldiers who killed hundreds of Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai massacre -- one has to destroy the village in order to save it.

Or the Education Department, Defense Department, the FBI...

In the months to come, there will be tons of dreadful proposals floating around. Each will identify a problem and then proceed to make it much worse.

Near the top of the list will be a boneheaded idea that really does belong in the dustbin of history. When Trump vowed to Make America Great Again, he apparently meant "great" as in setting the stage for another Great Depression. That is no exaggeration. After all, that's what happened the last time the U.S. government fiddled with the kind of protectionism that Trump is now peddling like shoes and cologne.

Suddenly, Americans are debating tariffs. And 2024 is looking a lot like 1924.

Actually, a more accurate date is 1930, when Congress passed the self-destructive Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. The legislation -- which was signed into law by Republican President Herbert Hoover and raised by as much as 60% about 900 import tariffs -- set out to protect U.S. businesses from foreign competition. It backfired in spectacular fashion, and soon Americans were standing in bread lines.

While it's fine that Americans are talking about tariffs, I'd prefer that they take a minute to really think about them. To the degree that we think about tariffs at all, we do it in completely the wrong way.

For one thing, we focus too much on the politics and not enough on the economics. Most economists see tariffs as economic suicide.

Here are five things Americans should be thinking about when it comes to tariffs.

-- It's wrong and dishonest for the anti-Trump media (which never raised a fuss over President Joe Biden's tariffs for the last four years) to now frame the story as "tariffs are back." They're not back. They never left. That's true particularly as relates to China, where Biden tried to be as tough as Trump because tariffs are ultrapopular with a significant faction within Biden's base: organized labor.

-- Tariffs are a tax on imports designed to protect whole industries from competition when those industries can't compete globally. Notice that Apple or Amazon don't need tariffs. They are an in-your-face form of protectionism, which Democrats typically champion and Republicans oppose. They also violate the principle of free trade. So in imposing tariffs, Trump is not being a very good Republican.

-- Contrary to popular belief, tariffs are not an act of war against foreign countries. The war is against U.S. consumers. The aim of tariffs is to encourage American to buy products produced in the United States by punishing them with higher prices until they fall in line and start spending their money the way the government wants them to. In that respect, tariffs are an attack on freedom.

-- Tariffs have a perverse way of inflicting the most pain on our best friends, allies and trading partners. It's not Iran or Russia who will get hurt by the Trump tariffs. It's Mexico and Canada, our No. 1 and No. 2 trading partners, respectively. The president-elect has threatened to impose a 25% tax on all products entering the U.S. from Mexico and Canada. Tariffs have the ability to transform friends into enemies.

-- Tariffs multiply. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has threatened to impose tariffs on U.S. goods coming into Mexico, which would hurt U.S. farmers, tech companies, etc. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau -- who said recently that Americans "are beginning to wake up to the real reality that tariffs on everything from Canada would make life a lot more expensive" -- made a similar threat.

Trump has plenty of bad ideas. But only a few graduate from daffy to dangerous. Tariffs is one of those.

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To find out more about Ruben Navarrette and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.