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Is Trump Falling Into the Trump Tariff Trap?
The Democrats are once again abdicating the jobs terrain to Trump, hoping instead that his tariff toy will blow up in his dictatorial hands. Instead of calling tariffs “insane,” Democrats should call them job-killing tariffs. And as prices rise, they can blame Trump for that as well.
Mar 13, 2025
Whether by design or instinct, candidate Donald Trump set a perfect trap for the Democrats when, in September 2024, he reacted to the John Deere and Company’s announcement that it would move a thousand jobs from the Midwest to Mexico. Trump said then:
I am just notifying John Deere right now that if you do that, we are putting a 200% tariff on everything that you want to sell into the United States.
Trump saw Deere’s announcement as the perfect opportunity to jump on Deere’s job destruction, which the company used to finance 12.2 billion in stock buybacks to enrich its investors.
The Democrats? They sent billionaire Mark Cuban out to the media to complain that the tariffs were “insane.”
But threatening tariffs did not feel insane to the Deere workers who were about to lose their jobs. Nor did they feel insane to the millions of other workers who had lost their jobs due to “free trade” deals like NAFTA.
The Democrats now have a chance to turn the tables—but, alas, they probably won’t.
The Democrats stumbled into the Trump’s tariff trap and provided many workers with yet another reason to abandon a party that had failed to say anything at all about the needless job destruction caused by overt corporate greed.
After Trump won the presidency last November, I was sure he would set more tariff traps, provoking the Democrats to reflexively react as corporate shills.
But along the way something funny happened. Trump fell into his own tariff trap, and his public support has fallen somewhat. The Democrats now have a chance to turn the tables—but, alas, they probably won’t.
Why Does Trump Love Tariffs?
Even the most ardent MAGA apologist knows that Trump has dictatorial impulses. He wants to play Brando in “The Godfather” and make you an offer you can’t refuse.
But playing Don Corleone in domestic affairs doesn’t come easily. Trump can flood the zone with executive orders, but the courts are still functioning and often enforce the law. Even a pliable Congress has rules which can get in the way of the legislative results Trump is demanding.
But there are two areas where Trump really can act unilaterally—foreign affairs and tariff policy.
As president, Trump is free to bully Ukraine, kiss up to Putin, threaten to annex Greenland, Panama, and even Canada. No one in the U.S. can really stop him. He doesn’t need the blessing of Congress unless he wants a new treaty, which he doesn’t.
Similarly, he can use Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which authorizes the U.S. Trade Representative, a Trump toady, to impose tariffs in response to unfair trade practices, which are not defined.
There is no way a full-scale trade war with Canada will do anything but shatter jobs on both sides of the border, while raising prices as well.
Tariffs are a shiny new toy for Trump to play with. He can turn tariffs on and off, making entire countries jump to his tune. Each day he comes up with new reasons to justify them—fentanyl, immigrants, unfair subsidies, too much control of domestic banking (God forbid!). But these are just excuses for having fun by intimidating entire countries.
Trump can also combine his control of foreign policy with tariffs, as he is gleefully doing with Canada. What fun it is to threaten to take down the Canadian economy with tariffs while bullying them into becoming the 51st state. Clearly Trump wants to flex his dictatorial muscles, even as his real one’s sag with age.
But by playing dictator, he has abdicated the targeted use of tariffs to protect jobs. There is no way a full-scale trade war with Canada will do anything but shatter jobs on both sides of the border, while raising prices as well. Why? Because corporations like John Deere are not fleeing to Canada to find cheaper labor.
As a result, a tariff war with Canada is likely to kiss goodbye as many U.S. jobs as are protected. But Trump doesn’t seem to care because he’s all in on making Canada sweat. Damn the jobs! Damn inflation! He’s simply in love with his unilateral powers, which no one else in the world has. That’s a high that beats fentanyl.
The Trump Trap of Stagflation
Trump may not know it, but he is playing with fire. Tariffs are certain to raise U.S. prices. Why? Because when U.S. corporations see that their competition from Canada faces price increases caused by the 25 percent tariff, the companies will raise their own prices, especially in key industries with only a handful of large competitors.
A tariff war with Canada is likely to kiss goodbye as many U.S. jobs as are protected. But Trump doesn’t seem to care because he’s all in on making Canada sweat. Damn the jobs! Damn inflation! He’s simply in love with his unilateral powers...
Furthermore, by Trump turning his tariff toy on and off, he is causing economic uncertainty. That uncertainty has already had a drastic impact on the stock market.
But it will get much worse if corporations hold back on investment decisions until Trump stops fiddling with his toy.
It’s a very big deal when corporations delay investment decisions. Slower investment rollouts can lead to an economic slowdown and even a recession. And such a downturn can quickly get out of hand, because the Wall Steet derivative games, the kind of which that caused the 2008 crash, are up and running again, bigger than ever.
So, here’s the trap. Tariffs will cause inflation, forcing the Federal Reserve to increase interest rates to combat price increases. And higher interest rates will further reduce economic activity, leading to more unemployment. The Fed then will be unable to boost employment, because that requires decreasing interest rates, which are likely to further fuel inflation.
Bingo, stagflation. I wonder how Trump will feel if morphs into Jimmy Carter?
What Should the Democrats Do?
James Carville is telling the Democrats to do nothing. Play dead and let the guy implode.
But that’s a very dangerous game. Even with all the chaos Trump still has favorability ratings close to 50 percent. His supporters see him taking action, it’s why they voted for him, and they will give him time to make his plans work. Yes, there are protests, but they’re nothing like in Trump’s first term. The danger is, if the Democrats give him uncontested time and space, Trump might find a way to escape from his trap.
Instead, the Democrats should take a page from Trump and put job protection on the top of their agenda. As tariffs bite and cause job destruction, the Democrats should show up and support those laid-off workers. Instead of calling tariffs “insane,” they should call them job-killing tariffs. And as prices rise, they can blame Trump for that as well.
I wonder how Trump will feel if morphs into Jimmy Carter?
More importantly, they should go after any company that receives taxpayer money and is laying off taxpayers. They should slam stock buybacks that enrich Wall Street wealth extractors and CEOs. They should make it perfectly clear that protecting jobs from corporate greed is the number one priority of the Democratic Party.
Will they do this? Dream on.
There is little indication that the Democrats are willing to upset their Wall Street backers by interfering with private sector layoff decisions and stock buybacks. The Democrats are once again abdicating the jobs terrain to Trump, hoping instead that his tariff toy will blow up in his dictatorial hands.
Maybe it will, or maybe working people will see that the Democrats still don’t give a damn about their job security. At least Trump is trying, they may say.
Until the Democrats offer a compelling working-class vision, those living paycheck to paycheck have reasons to stick with Trump who, at the very least, has buried the free-trade mantra that working people know has destroyed so many jobs and damaged their communities.
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International Push for Consumer Boycott of US Grows
"A lot of people feel betrayed by our closest ally," said one marketer in Canada, where President Donald Trump has imposed 25% tariffs.
Mar 12, 2025
With declining consumer interest in Tesla vehicles sending CEO and Trump administration ally Elon Musk into an apparent panic over the electric automaker's plummeting stock—spurring an impromptu car show on the White House lawn Tuesday with President Donald Trump scolding Americans for not buying Musk's products—recent reports from across Europe and Canada suggest the two right-wing leaders are pushing global consumers to reject not just Tesla, but a wide array of American goods.
As The Guardianreported Wednesday, numbers released this week by Statistics Canada showed waning enthusiasm for Canadians to visit their southern neighbor, with 23% fewer Canadians taking road trips into the U.S.—the most popular mode of cross-border travel—this year so far compared to February 2024.
With Trump initiating a trade war with Canada—falsely claiming the country is a major source of fentanyl flowing into the U.S.—by imposing 25% tariffs on all Canadian imports and threatening to take over the country as the "cherished Fifty First State," consumers have been downloading apps like "Maple Scan" and "Is This Canadian?" to avoid purchasing U.S.-made products.
"A lot of people feel betrayed by our closest ally," Emma Cochran, an Ottawa-based marketer, toldNBC News on Wednesday.
Cochrane partnered with a colleague to make hats and shirts emblazoned with the phrase, "Canada is not for sale," one of which was worn by Ontario Premier Doug Ford last week.
"This felt like a way that we could participate and just kind of say, 'We're going to stand up for Canada,'" she told NBC.
Canadian officials announced retaliatory tariffs on $21 billion in goods on Wednesday after Trump raised global steel and aluminum tariffs to 25%—backing off of an earlier threat of a 50% levy.
As some Canadian provinces began pulling U.S. liquor brands from government-run stores and replacing bottles with "Buy Canadian Instead" signs, the CEO of the Kentucky-based Brown-Forman, which makes Jack Daniel's, called the boycott "frustrating."
"That's worse than a tariff because it's literally taking your sales away," Whiting said on an earnings call last week.
Nick Talley, a physician-scientist in New South Wales, Australia, said Trump "presumably... thought everyone would just bow down" after he imposed tariffs and raised prices for consumers around the world.
Danish grocery company Salling Group has also taken action to oppose Trump's threat to take control of Greenland, an autonomous territory within the Danish kingdom.
The company is still carrying U.S.-made products but is marking European-made goods with a black star to identify them for shoppers.
A Verian/SVT survey in Sweden on Tuesday found that "the U.S.'s actions in world politics... have led many Swedes to hesitate in the face of American products."
Twenty-nine percent of Swedish residents said they had refrained from buying U.S. goods in the last month amid Trump's trade war, his temporary suspension of aid to Ukraine after publicly berating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House earlier this month, and Musk's meddling in European politics by expressing support for British right-wing extremist Tommy Robinson and German political party Alternative for Germany, which has embraced Nazi slogans and came in second in last month's elections.
Norwegian fuel company Haltbakk urged "all Norwegians and Europeans" to join in boycotting the U.S. after the confrontation between Trump and Zelenskyy, which the firm called "the biggest shit show ever presented 'live on TV' by the current American president and his vice president."
The company has provided fuel to U.S. ships in Norwegian ports but said it would no longer do so as the international community expressed shock over Trump's treatment of Zelenskyy and Ukrainian victims of Russia's invasion.
Meanwhile, European consumers have continued to make their views on Musk—a "special government employee" of Trump's who has spearheaded the slashing of federal jobs and spending and threatened to cut $700 billion from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—by refusing to buy Tesla cars.
February sales were down 76% in Germany, 53% in Portugal, 55% in Italy, and 48% in Norway and Denmark—contributing the company's plummeting share price and loss of $800 billion in market cap.
Trump offered to buy a Tesla before staging a showing of five of the cars at the White House Tuesday, claiming American consumers are "illegally" boycotting the company, but as Channel 4 in the U.K. reported, "the company will have to find a lot more buyers to make up for a sharp decline in sales across Europe" as both boycotts and protests at Tesla dealerships spread.
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'Hidden From the American People,' GOP Moves to Give Trump Unchecked Trade War Powers
"They slipped in a little clause letting them escape ever having to debate or vote on Trump's tariffs," said one Democratic critic. "Isn't that clever?"
Mar 11, 2025
Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday snuck language into a rule on the GOP's stopgap funding bill that a pair of Democratic lawmakers warned would "effectively surrender congressional power over raising taxes and tariffs on the American people" to President Donald Trump as he escalates his trade war against the world.
The Republican move would prevent any Democratic vote to challenge the "national emergency" being invoked by Trump to levy sweeping tariffs on countries including Canada, China, and Mexico—and, according to remarks by the president during his joint address to Congress earlier this month, any nation that does not lower barriers to trade with the United States by April 2.
Trump has used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to slap tariffs on Canadian, Chinese, and Mexican exports—although some products have been granted exemptions. The 1977 law empowers the president to control international transactions by declaring a national emergency. However, the measure has never been invoked in order to impose tariffs.
While House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and some of his GOP colleagues said Tuesday that they believe they can push through the six-month funding measure that would avert a government shutdown, Democratic lawmakers condemned the Republicans' process, in which they say they were not included.
"Guess what [Republicans] tucked into this rule, hoping that nobody would notice?" Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), the ranking member of the House Rules Committee, said on the lower chamber's floor on Tuesday. "They slipped in a little clause letting them escape ever having to debate or vote on Trump's tariffs. Isn't that clever?"
McGovern: Guess what they tucked into this rule, hoping that nobody would notice? They did this after everyone went home. They slipped in a little clause
letting them escape from ever having to debate or vote on trump's tariffs. pic.twitter.com/qza0T1UdyT
— Acyn (@Acyn) March 11, 2025
Reps. Don Beyer (D-Va.) and Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), both members of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade, said in a joint statement Tuesday that "every House Republican who votes for this measure is voting to give Trump expanded powers to raise taxes on American households through tariffs with full knowledge of how he is using those powers, and every Republican will own the economic consequences of that vote."
"It speaks volumes that Republicans are sneaking this provision into a procedural measure hidden from the American people," added Beyer and DelBene, who together previously introduced the Prevent Tariff Abuse Act and the Congressional Trade Authority Act in a bid "to rein in Trump's abuses of tariff powers."
The lawmakers continued:
Today, Trump is further endangering the U.S. economy and hiking prices on the American people by increasing his destructive and pointless tariffs on Canada. There can be no doubt about how he will use the power Republicans are about to give him, and about the disastrous economic effects we have already seen from Trump's tariffs. While he babbles about making Canada the 51st state, your groceries and housing are getting more expensive and your retirement accounts are getting crushed—and House Republicans are supporting him every step of the way.
"The Constitution delegates authority setting tariffs, which are taxes, to Congress, and Congress retains the power to stop Trump from wrecking our economy," Beyer and DelBene added. "Yet House Republicans are choosing to surrender the power of their own votes to a reckless president, putting politics over the country and their constituents. We will continue urging our colleagues to come to their senses and save our economy from Trump's tariff chaos."
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