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Even Those Who Believe Tariffs Are Useful Think Trump's Trade War Makes 'Zero Sense'
One economist warned the tariffs would amount to the "largest tax increase... that has ever been imposed" on working-class families.
Feb 03, 2025
The trade war that U.S. President Donald Trump launched over the weekend by announcing sweeping new tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico, and China drew intense criticism from experts and analysts across the ideological spectrum, including those who believe strategically deployed tariffs can help protect domestic jobs and workers.
"Tariffs are a powerful, effective tool to deliver certain goals. But Trump's Canada/China/Mexico tariffs make zero sense. And even undermine tariffs' legit uses," Lori Wallach, director of the Rethink Trade program at the American Economic Liberties Project, wrote on social media late Sunday, expressing agreement with United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain.
Fain said in a
statement that the UAW "supports aggressive tariff action to protect American manufacturing jobs as a good first step to undoing decades of anti-worker trade policy," pointing specifically to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and its successor agreement that Trump negotiated during his first White House term.
The union does not, however, "support using factory workers as pawns in a fight over immigration or drug policy," Fain continued. "The national emergency we face is not about drugs or immigration, but about a working class that has fallen behind for generations while corporate America exploits workers abroad and consumers at home for massive Wall Street paydays."
The officially stated purpose for Trump's 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports and 10% tariffs on Chinese imports is to confront what the White House described as the "extraordinary threat" posed by the movement of migrants and drugs across the southern and northern U.S. borders.
But Wallach argued Sunday that using tariffs to address immigration and the flow of drugs "is like trying surgery using a saxophone—wrong tool!"
"After decades of an American trade policy run by and for the largest corporations and to the detriment of American workers, independent farmers, and small businesses, we certainly do need a new approach," she added. "But simply imposing 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada and another 10% on China will not rebuild American manufacturing/create U.S. manufacturing jobs or raise wages. Particularly, if such tariffs can be axed, lowered, or upped at the president's whim for reasons unrelated to trade/jobs."
"While tariffs can play a constructive role in protecting U.S. jobs and enforcing labor and environmental standards when part of a strategic industrial policy, Trump's approach is neither strategic nor appropriate."
Trump told reporters late last week that he is "not looking for a concession" in response to the new tariffs, which prompted swift retaliation from Canada, Mexico, and China.
The announced tariffs, which are set to take effect on Tuesday, also shook U.S. and global equity markets as Trump threatened additional duties against imports from European Union nations and admitted Americans could experience "some pain" stemming from the trade war. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Monday that her country reached an agreement with Trump to delay implementation of the tariffs on Mexican imports for a month, reportedly in exchange for the deployment of 10,000 Mexican soldiers to the country's northern border.
Contrary to Trump's insistence that tariffs are paid by targeted nations, they are in fact paid by U.S. importers, who then either eat the costs or pass them on to consumers through higher prices. Economist Dean Baker noted that the new tariffs amount to "a tax increase of roughly $200 billion a year ($1,600 per family) that will overwhelmingly be paid by moderate-income and middle-income families."
"It is the largest tax increase on them that has ever been imposed," Baker wrote Sunday. "And retaliation from both countries is likely to impose additional costs."
Melinda St. Louis, Global Trade Watch director at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said in a statement that "no matter the intractable problem, Trump's go-to playbook is to bully our neighbors through tariffs and to scapegoat immigrants."
"Instead of addressing the actual causes or seeking real solutions to the complex public health crisis surrounding fentanyl, Trump jumps to impose damaging and self-defeating across-the-board tariffs and to spout more hateful rhetoric that dehumanizes our immigrant neighbors," said St. Louis. "While tariffs can play a constructive role in protecting U.S. jobs and enforcing labor and environmental standards when part of a strategic industrial policy, Trump's approach is neither strategic nor appropriate."
"Using tariffs to bully countries to advance an anti-immigrant and anti-humanitarian agenda will do nothing to support U.S. workers and will make our immigrant neighbors less safe," she added.
The tariffs also drew backlash from the right-wing Wall Street Journaleditorial board, which slammed the president for launching "the dumbest trade war in history."
"Bad policy has damaging consequences," the editorial board wrote late Sunday, "whether or not Mr. Trump chooses to admit it."
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How Corporate America Subverts Reform to Boost Profits
Corporations use their endless resources to ensure that efforts designed to benefit people enrich those at the very top.
Apr 01, 2023
One measure of corporate power’s dominance is its 24/7 relentless, profit-driven capacity to strike back and prevail over reforms or other efforts designed to give the people voice and fairness.
Here are some examples that should give us pause in touting civic victories:
A few years ago, during lunch with the formidable, creative Brian Lamb—founder of C-SPAN—I asked whether, after decades of blanket coverage of Congressional sessions, accessible to millions of people, Congress was an improved institution. After all, as Justice Louis Brandeis once wrote: “sunlight is the best disinfectant.” His reply: “No.” Such is the ever-growing grip of corporate lobbyists directly on and inside Congress, compared to the unorganized sovereign people back home.
The massive government investment in developing important pharmaceuticals over the decades, followed by free giveaways of these discoveries to drug companies, was supposed to reduce the corporate cost of discovering and testing new medicines and thereby reduce what companies like Pfizer, Merck and Eli Lilly would charge patients. No way—Americans, who paid for these discoveries, are charged record-high prices for pharmaceuticals—higher than in any other country in the world.
To add insult to injury, American drug firms exported production of many of these medicines to China and India for importing back to the U.S. for a greater profit than might come from U.S. production. One result—the national security nightmare of our country not producing any antibiotics here at home!
During the second Bush Administration, Congress cut the tax rate sharply to induce U.S. companies to bring home tens of billions of stored dollars in return for businesses promising to invest this money in productive enterprise and wage gains. Result—a double-cross. Instead, the companies bought back their own stock, pumped up executive compensation, and funded mergers.
Years ago, Congress passed legislation allowing business corporations to deduct up to ten percent of their taxable income for charitable contributions. The lawmakers thought this would unleash large sums of money to help the needy in addition to educational and civic initiatives.
Result: Only a tiny number of major corporations exceed the one percent level of charitable donations. Hugely profitable companies give to charitable activities at a fraction of one percent. Apple is one of them, headed by CEO Tim Cook who makes $833 A MINUTE!
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) does not require companies to disclose their percentage of charitable contributions. Institutional and individual shareholders should introduce resolutions to compel the top brass to do so. Such resolutions should win a majority of votes and open the door to the shame and embarrassment of stingy companies. In such a “soft area,” this may be enough to spring tens of billions of dollars for “good works.” Wake up perpetrators of “good works!” All you have to lose is your perennial red ink.
President Bill Clinton produced another unintended boomerang when in 1993, he got through Congress a revenue rule prohibiting deductibility for any corporate boss who received annual compensation above $1 million a year. However, the rule came with a giant “loophole.” As Sarah Anderson of the Institute for Policy Studies wrote in a report you should read: “So-called ‘performance’ pay, including stock options and certain bonuses, would be exempted from the deductibility cap.”
Result: Executive compensation via deviously calculated stock options and bonuses skyrocketed, and, combined with a Reaganite elimination of SEC restrictions over stock buybacks in 1982, led to the gigantic waste of trillions of dollars of corporate profits poured (shareholder money) into unproductive stock buybacks.
Corporate bosses have a personal interest in stock buybacks. As Steve Clifford showed in his book The CEO Pay Machine: How It Trashes America and How to Stop It, the bosses developed metrics for raising their pay that just happened to coincide with the stock buyback and stock option racket.
The emergence of the Pentagon-developed Internet was supposed to even a playing field between the haves and the have-nots by making access, retrieval, and transfer of knowledge and informed advocacy virtually free. It was supposed to give power to the people.
Result: Addictive trivia to the masses, information overload, and the rise of the Wardens of the Internet Gulag – Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and the rest of these unregulated control freaks who distribute your personal information anywhere in the world for big profits.
Then, of course, there is the old standby—Regulatory Capture. First comes reforms for the people after years of striving to create health, safety, and economic regulatory agencies to impose some ‘law and order’ on the out-of-control corporate bandits and greed hounds. Then come the rebounds. Corporate lobbyists, campaign cashiers, and the placement of corporatists to run federal agencies. These corporate operatives work to put the agencies to sleep or to actually turn them against the people directly through this internal sabotage. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) are two such examples.
Congress has even let the drug and medical device companies fund the FDA’s drug approval regulatory apparatus. What’s that saying about ‘not biting the hand that feeds you’?
Knowing about this second, third, and fourth strike capability by big business may sensitize citizen groups and advocates to demand that the Democratic Party, at least, be alert and forceful in rolling back these anti-people travesties when they achieve majority status on Capitol Hill. Rhetoric is useless.
To date, the Dems have rarely done so even for such giveaways as Trump’s 2017 huge tax cut for the rich and powerful, which the Democrats had opposed. Taking over the House in 2019, some Dems led by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman, Richard Neal (D-MA) openly said they were not going to move to repeal and use the monies for good purposes.
Persistent Democracy does take work, doesn’t it? Oh people!
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7 Out of 10 Americans Agree That Economy is Rigged Against Them
Recent poll finds 71 percent of Americans believe U.S. economy is rigged
Jun 28, 2016
A new Marketplace-Edison Research poll published Tuesday found that a full 71 percent of respondents agree that the economy is rigged, affirming the popular rhetoric of the current presidential campaign season.
The majority opinion held firm across ethnicity, class, age, and gender differences. A whopping 83 percent of African Americans polled agreed that the economy is rigged, and 80 percent of people ages 18-24 also held that opinion.
The poll, tracking rising economic anxiety, discovered that most Americans agree that the economy was better for their parent's generation and believe it will be worse for the next generation.
Perhaps the perception of a rigged economy is because people work harder for increasingly less financial security.
The poll found that nearly one-quarter of respondents had not taken a single vacation in over five years, and almost 50 percent also confirmed that they feared they might lose their jobs within the next 12 months.
Moreover, 71 percent said they were afraid of an unexpected medical bill, 53 percent feared being unable to make a mortgage payment, and 60 percent of renters feared being unable to pay rent.
Nearly one-third told the pollsters that they are losing sleep over their financial situation.
Meanwhile, the poll found that Wall Street and banks are unfavorable: nearly 60 percent agreed that Wall Street does more to hurt than help most Americans, and 56 percent agreed that the U.S. government should break up banks deemed "too big to fail."
A majority of 54 percent also felt that the decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs resulted from so-called "free trade" deals rather than "natural changes in the economy," as the poll put it.
The poll's questions were familiar to many of those following this year's presidential election, as presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders made the phrase "rigged economy" and his critique of trade deals into touchstones of his campaign:
\u201cThe truth is, we have a rigged economy. It is unsustainable. It is not moral. And it's not the economy we need to be a great nation.\u201d— Bernie Sanders (@Bernie Sanders) 1461545292
\u201cThe fact of the matter is trade agreements pushed by corporate America are very good for CEOs, but disastrous for American workers.\u201d— Bernie Sanders (@Bernie Sanders) 1464136275
Following the shocking success of Sanders' outsider campaign, current front-runners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have co-opted Sanders' language to woo his supporters.
"It's not just the political system that's rigged; it's the whole economy," Trump said during a speech last week, while Clinton on Monday told a crowd, "To build an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top, we have got to go big, and we have got to go bold," as Common Dreams reported.
Yet their efforts may fail: The Marketplace-Edison Research poll found that many respondents are also "not satisfied at all" with the two top presidential contenders.
Pundits have connected "a deep frustration on the part of working-class voters with economic globalization schemes," as John Nichols put it, to the recent Brexit vote. This has prompted some to wonder if a similar shock may eventually strike the U.S. establishment if today's economic woes go unheeded.
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