
Trump’s Tariffs
Donald Trump is already bragging about how his tariff led economy will return jobs to Americans. The brutal truth is that Americans will be paying for Trump’s tariffs out of their own purses and wallets. High tariffs on international goods and services will mean that what used to be cheaper at the check-out will no longer be. It will mean ordinary working Americans paying more for their essentials. Yes, eventually it might deliver more revenue to US manufacturing and thus growth and jobs but not in the short term. Financial pain for more Americans is on the cards and coming quickly.
“US President Donald Trump has said he is considering imposing a 10% tariff on imports of Chinese-made goods as soon as 1 February.”
“…administration will impose 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada on February 1, an extraordinary change in North American trade policy that could raise prices for American consumers.”
How The Trump Tariffs Will Work
International markets will respond by imposing tariffs on American imports in tit for tat and so jobs will likely be lost for those companies manufacturing in the US. The complication in all this is that many American corporations manufacture offshore, so deciding what is American and what is not is no simple task. Apple and many other US firms manufacture their goods in China. Lots of American companies have been moving their plants to Mexico to cash in on cheaper wages and less union drafted employment rules and regulations. Shareholders have been king for a long time now, with workers and consumers treated like second class citizens by CEOs and their boards. This trend has been exported around the world to places like Australia. The consolidation of market control via monopolies and duopolies has seen consumers lose their buying power because of no competition. These corporations have gamed the ‘so-called’ free market system via takeovers and mergers.

High Inflation Back Via Trump’s Tariffs
Trump’s tariffs will be inflationary, obviously, as higher prices on goods and services is what inflation is essentially about. The rich will love this, as they reap the rewards of higher interest rates on their savings. The working poor will not only be paying more at the cash register for everything but higher inflation will spiral things up further more widely, including US made stuff. Many of the gains made by the Biden government on the economy will be lost to the effects of Trump’s tariffs. All this crazy talk of replacing taxes with tariffs is absurd, as their impact will depress markets and send the US economy into recession. Slashing government spending will only make things much worse. People talk about the trillions of dollars of debt that the US government is in but where do they think that this money has gone to? It has gone to the American people, in the main, to the private sector. It is one of the economic reasons why the US is a privately wealthy nation.
The National Debt
“The U.S. has carried debt since its inception. Debts incurred during the American Revolutionary War amounted to over $75 million by January 1, 1791. Over the next 45 years, the debt continued to grow until 1835 when it notably shrank due to the sale of federally-owned lands and cuts to the federal budget. Shortly thereafter, an economic depression caused the debt to again grow into the millions. The debt grew over 4,000% through the course of the American Civil War, increasing from $65 million in 1860 to $1 billion in 1863 and almost $3 billion shortly after the conclusion of the war in 1865. The debt grew steadily into the 20th century and was roughly $22 billion after the country financed its involvement in World War I.
Notable recent events triggering large spikes in the debt include the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, the 2008 Great Recession, and the COVID-19 pandemic. “
The national debt is an accounting of government spending since inception. If the American people really wanted to fix this $37 trillion dollar debt they could by dipping into their pockets and paying it off. However, I don’t see many billionaires suggesting this. No, it is a political football to be kicked around to score points.

The Trouble With Tariffs
“Mainstream economists are generally skeptical of tariffs, considering them a mostly inefficient way for governments to raise money and promote prosperity. They are especially alarmed by Trump’s latest proposed tariffs.
This week, a report from the Peterson Institute for International Economics concluded that Trump’s main tariff proposals – assuming that the targeted countries retaliated with their own tariffs — would slash more than a percentage point off the U.S. economy by 2026 and make inflation 2 percentage points higher next year than it otherwise would have been.”
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump.
©MidasWord
