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Watchdog Says Trump Tariff Pause Lays Bare 'Just One More Con on Working People'
"All he has shown is that he'll cave to Wall Street's hand-wringing and prioritize his own power over real people's plight," said one expert at Public Citizen.
Apr 09, 2025
"Trump's 'will he, won't he' tariff chaos is just one more con on working people."
That's what Melinda St. Louis, Global Trade Watch director at the watchdog group Public Citizen, said in a Wednesday statement after U.S. President Donald Trump announced a 90-pause for what he has called "reciprocal" tariffs, excluding China.
"He claimed that the so-called 'reciprocal tariffs' would protect American jobs, but these reckless tariffs were never designed to do that," she said of Trump. "He just wants to wield threats as a schoolyard bully while giving his billionaire buddies sweetheart deals."
St. Louis warned that "when he says he's going to 'negotiate,' he means more harmful free trade agreements that double down on the failed trade model he claims to oppose and that force countries to gut public interest protections for the benefit of Big Tech, Big Pharma, and other corporate giants."
"Who's left out of his megalomaniacal game? The workers he claimed to support."
"And he wants U.S. companies to beg for exemptions from his tariffs, as they did in his first term. This is all part of Trump's authoritarianism and corruption, forcing countries and businesses to bend the knee just as he is doing with law firms and universities," she stressed. "Who's left out of his megalomaniacal game? The workers he claimed to support. All he has shown is that he'll cave to Wall Street's hand-wringing and prioritize his own power over real people's plight."
St. Louis wasn't alone in continuing to blast Trump's tactics around tariffs, which have led some economists to conclude that the president does not actually even understand how international trade works.
"It took a month to 'negotiate a deal,' but it only took one day for Trump to hit the brakes on his nonsensical new tax on autos from Canada and Mexico," Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said in a Wednesday statement. "This endless flip-flopping and bluster is just further proof that Donald Trump has no economic strategy beyond slapping tariffs on our trading partners."
"Instead of coming up with a real plan to get American workers a fair shake, he's making the United States into an international joke and driving up prices for U.S. consumers," he added. "If Republicans in Congress allow him to keep this up, Trump will keep yo-yoing on tariffs and using threats to pressure U.S. companies to stay in line instead of fighting back against this senseless economic war on American families."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a longtime critic of "disastrous unfettered free trade deals," said in a lengthy statement that "targeted tariffs can be a powerful tool to stop corporations from outsourcing American jobs... But Trump's chaotic across-the-board tariffs are not the way to do it."
"What Trump is doing is unconstitutional. Trump has claimed supposed 'emergency' powers to bypass Congress and impose unilateral tariffs on hundreds of countries... This is another step toward authoritarianism," the senator asserted. "And let's be clear about why Trump is doing all this: to give massive tax breaks to billionaires."
"These tariffs will cost working families thousands of dollars a year, and Trump plans to use that revenue to help pay for a huge tax break for the richest people in America. That is what Trump and Republicans in Congress are working on right now: If they have their way on the tariffs and their huge tax bill, most Americans will see their taxes go up, while those on top will get a huge tax break," he added. "Enough is enough. We need a coherent trade policy that puts working people first."
Despite warnings that the costs of his planned tariffs would be passed on to consumers, Trump unveiled the duties last week, causing stocks to plummet and fueling recession warnings and speculation that he's tanking the economy on purpose.
Trump's tariffs took effect at midnight Wednesday. By the early afternoon, the president declared a partial pause via his Truth Social platform. He said that more than 75 countries have reached out "to negotiate a solution."
In clarifying comments to reporters on Wednesday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the 10% baseline tariffs will remain in effect, but higher duties targeting various nations are suspended. He also reiterated that the administration's message is, "Do not retaliate, and you will be rewarded."
The exception to the pause is China, which initially hit back by announcing 34% import duties on American goods last Friday. Faced with Trump's 104% rate on Wednesday, China hiked that to 84% and imposed restrictions on 18 U.S. companies.
Trump wrote on social media Wednesday that "based on the lack of respect that China has shown to the World's Markets, I am hereby raising the Tariff charged to China by the United States of America to 125%, effective immediately."
The Chinese government issued a travel advisory on Wednesday, saying in a statement, "Recently, due to the deterioration of China-U.S. economic and trade relations and the domestic security situation in the United States, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism reminds Chinese tourists to fully assess the risks of traveling to the United States and be cautious."
The Hill reported that during a Wednesday press briefing, Lin Jian, China's Foreign Affairs spokesperson, said that "the U.S. is seeking hegemony in the name of reciprocity, sacrificing the legitimate interests of all countries to serve its own selfish interests, and prioritizing the U.S. over international rules. This is typical unilateralism, protectionism, and economic bullying."
"The abuse of tariffs by the United States is tantamount to depriving countries, especially those in the Global South, of their right to development," he added.
Before Trump announced the pause, the European Union was planning to respond to Trump's steel tariffs with "levies of up to 25% on a sweeping list of U.S. products," The Washington Postreported. "There was no immediate comment from the European Union, and it was unclear how Trump's latest announcement might affect the E.U. countermeasures approved Wednesday."
Although stocks soared after Trump's pause announcement, many experts remain skeptical and demanded transparency around the administration's global trade talks.
"Absent transparency about what is being demanded, we could end up with the worst of all outcomes—a bunch of bad special interest deals, all of the economic damage caused by tariff uncertainty and no trade rebalancing, U.S. manufacturing capacity, or goods jobs," said Lori Wallach, director of the Rethink Trade program at the American Economic Liberties Project, in a Wednesday statement.
"The Trump administration could be striking deals with dozens of countries, but absent transparency, the public will not know whether their interests or Trump's billionaire Cabinet and friends on Wall Street or his family are being served," she pointed out. "Deals must focus on addressing the mercantilist practices that some countries employ, which fuel the extreme global trade imbalances that have deindustrialized the United States and today deny the benefits of trade to numerous countries worldwide."
Wallach emphasized that "the Trump administration must not use these talks to bully countries into gutting their online privacy and Big Tech anti-monopoly policies or undermining their food safety, health, or environmental laws."
"The chaos of these whipsaw tariffs flip-flops is already causing economic chaos and losses, undermining confidence in America and our markets," she added. "Cutting deals in secret only adds to that uncertainty and risks corruption, which won't just hurt Trump's stated goal of investment in U.S. manufacturing but the economy as a whole."
While experts like Wallach call for transparency in the tariff process, many congressional Republicans are working to further empower Trump. Nearly all GOP members of the U.S House of Representatives
voted Wednesday for a rule that blocks lawmakers' ability to force a vote on repealing the president's import duties for 90 days.
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A Week After Hiking Trump Recession Odds, Goldman Sachs Does It Again
"Trump and House Republicans are crashing the economy, raising your cost of living, and driving us toward a recession," said the chamber's top Democrat. "What happened to the so-called golden era of America?"
Apr 07, 2025
A week after Goldman Sachs raised the chance of a U.S. recession in the next 12 months from 20% to 35%, the Wall Street giant elevated it to 45% on Sunday, following President Donald Trump's worse-than-anticipated tariff announcement.
Goldman Sachs' note—tilted, Countdown to Recession—points to "a sharp tightening in financial conditions, foreign consumer boycotts, and a continued spike in policy uncertainty that is likely to depress capital spending by more than we had previously assumed."
The analysis is based on expectations that negotiations early this week will lead to "a large reduction in the tariffs" that Trump is set to impose on Wednesday. If that doesn't happen, Goldman's forecast is expected to change for the worse.
Since Trump's "Liberation Day" announcement last Wednesday, "at least seven top investment banks have raised their recession risk forecasts," Reutersnoted Monday, "with JPMorgan putting the odds of a U.S. and global recession at 60%, on fears that the tariffs will not only ignite U.S. inflation but also spark retaliatory measures from other countries, as China has already announced."
China initially responded to Trump on Friday with 34% import duties on all American goods. The U.S. president hit back on Monday, further escalating his trade war with the Chinese government by threatening to impose an additional 50% tariff. Citing a White House official, CNBCpointed out that "U.S. tariffs on China will total 104% if Trump's latest threat takes effect."
Trump wrote in a Truth Social post: "Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated! Negotiations with other countries, which have also requested meetings, will begin taking place immediately."
Stocks have plummeted over the past week, and were "swinging Monday following a manic morning where indexes plunged, soared, and then sank again as Wall Street tossed around a false rumor," The Associated Pressreported.
"A White House account on X said a rumor circulating that Trump was considering a 90-day pause on his tariffs was 'fake news,'" the AP continued. "The intense and sudden moves show how hard financial markets are straining to see hopes that Trump may let up on his stiff tariffs, which economists see raising the risks of a global recession."
While progressive economists and working-class people have highlighted how Trump's "batshit crazy" tariffs are expected to impact everyday Americans—as the cost of the duties are passed on to consumers—many executives are also blasting the president's policy.
One respondent to a CNBC CEO Council survey called Trump's tariffs "disappointingly stupid and illogical," and said that "without faith that our government knows what it is doing, it is impossible for businesses to thrive."
According to CNBC, other CEO responses included:
- "This is the Trump recession."
- "Trump has imposed tariffs on component parts that are simply unavailable in the U.S. and never will be. He has surrounded himself with an incompetent cadre of yes men and women unable or unwilling to offer him cogent counsel."
- "We imagine that our suppliers will have to swallow part of the tariff, and we will have to pass on part of the tariff to our customers. We are controlling what we can control, pricing and sourcing decisions. We can't control the impact of tariffs on the consumer mindset, which we imagine could be significant."
Democrats in Congress also continued to call out the Republican president on Monday.
"Trump and House Republicans are crashing the economy, raising your cost of living, and driving us toward a recession,"
said the chamber's minority leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). "What happened to the so-called golden era of America?"
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Why Aren't You Supporting the Trump Tariffs?
Progressives and Democrats need a trade policy that makes sense, resonates with working people, and proves they understand the economy better than a know-nothing President Trump.
Apr 07, 2025
On this question, you can take your pick:
- They will lead to a destructive trade war.
- They will lead to a massive economic depression, like the 1930s.
- They will make prices and unemployment rise at the same time, like in the 1970s.
- They will disappear our savings and pensions as the stock market craters, like in 1929.
- And to save democracy, WE SHOULD NEVER SUPPORT TRUMP ON ANYTHING!
The United Autoworkers (UAW), one of the most progressive unions in the country, isn’t buying any of this. For now, it fully supports the Trump tariffs. As the UAW puts it:
This is a long-overdue shift away from a harmful economic framework that has devastated the working class and driven a race to the bottom across borders in the auto industry. It signals a return to policies that prioritize the workers who build this country—rather than the greed of ruthless corporations.
For more than thirty years, the UAW and other unions and progressives have fought free trade deals like NAFTA, adopted in 1994, which in the succeeding decades have decimated American working-class jobs and communities, especially in the industrial areas of the Midwest.
The argument against free trade was simple: Allowing corporations to flee easily and rapidly to low-wage countries put them in a competitive race to the bottom in pursuit of cheaper wages and less costly working conditions. This was especially true in the better-paid U.S. manufacturing industries. Company negotiators threatened job relocation or reductions in virtually every collective bargaining effort with industrial unions.
Corporations said it again and again: “Accept wage and benefit concessions or we’ll move the plant to Mexico.” For labor unions that was a lose-lose proposition. Take less money and benefits and undercut your standard of living or hold fast and lose your job.
The Democrats, led by President Bill Clinton, put together enough votes to pass the deal, and they have been paying the price ever since. Sherrod Brown, the former U.S. Senator from Ohio, says that what he repeatedly heard in his failed senatorial campaign last year was how the Democrats destroyed jobs via NAFTA.
Allowing corporations to easily relocate abroad has been a key element of the neoliberal march to rising inequality. Free trade involves a trade-off, it was argued. More workers would get jobs in growing export industries than would be lost in manufacturing. And the rise of cheap imports would lower the prices of goods workers bought, effectively giving them a pay raise.
Of course, the reality was that the new non-union working-class jobs pay far less than the unionized ones that were lost, and the working-class knows it. And while cheaper goods from Walmart likely offset some of the material sting, moving down the socio-economic ladder is painful and contrary to the American dream.
After years of railing against this Faustian bargain, progressives are now watching Trump claim he is protecting U.S. industries through massive tariffs. The goal, he sometimes says, is to bring back the jobs that were lost.
Progressive Democrats are stuck with a painful dilemma. If they oppose the tariffs across the board, they will be siding with the financiers and CEOs who have profited wildly from low or no tariffs, and have ushered in runaway inequality and increasing job insecurity. (See Wall Street’s War on Workers.)
But Democrats on the left so detest Trump, that it’s nearly impossible for them to join with the UAW to support the tariffs. Unless a new path is forged, progressives will find themselves in an unholy alliance with the Wall Street neoliberals and against the working-class, sounding the death knell for any kind of progressive-worker alliance to build an alternative to Trumpism.
What is a Progressive Trade Policy?
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is attacking the Trump tariffs by playing his Vermont card, since the state has extensive economic ties to Canada. His key is focusing on working-class jobs:
Given Vermont’s long-established economic ties with our Canadian neighbor, the impact on our state will be even greater. We need a rational and well-thought-out trade policy, not arbitrary actions from the White House. I will do everything possible to undo the damage that Trump’s tariffs are causing working families in Vermont and across the country.
But just what would a “well-thought-out trade policy” look like?
Boarder Adjustment Tax
The goal of a worker-oriented trade policy is to take wages out of competition. That could be most easily done through a tariff called a border adjustment tax. The tax covers the difference in wages between the low-wage and high-wage workers, something that is easily calculated. If wages are nearly identical there would be no need for a tariff.
Targeted Tariffs
When John Deere and Company announced last year it was moving approximately 1,000 jobs to Mexico, in effect to finance higher CEO pay and stock buybacks for Wall Street investors, Trump threatened to impose a 200 percent tariff on any subsequently imported Deere products from that country. That sent the exact message workers wanted to hear: You move our jobs away to fatten your pockets, you get hammered.
Hard to argue with that proposition, but the Democrats did just that. Instead of dealing with how the job shift to Mexico was being used to finance stock giveaways to Wall Street, they rolled out Mark Cuban, who called the tariffs “insane,” because they would hurt Deere.
What About Countries with High-wage Labor?
Workers in export industries in northern Europe, Canada, and Japan have wages and benefits as high or higher than U.S. workers. What’s the rationale, for example, to put tariffs on German-made cars? One reason would be to equalize tariffs in each country and in the long run move them towards zero. The other is to encourage them to increase production in the US.
Ironically, about 5,600 German corporations already have been moving to the U.S. as they seek access to bigger markets and lower production costs. As many set up in low-wage states in the U.S. South, they avoid the higher labor costs in Germany. Also, they have been taking advantage of lavish subsidies as states compete to attract jobs. Energy is also cheaper in the U.S. and transportation costs are lowered. And finally, Germany makes certain high-quality products, especially in green energy, that aren’t yet produced here.
This suggests that a “well thought-out trade policy,” a la Sanders, with Germany should be the result of negotiations, not unilateral actions.
But Trump doesn’t do “well-thought-out,” which means his tariffs are a colossal mess, perhaps even the product of quickly produced ChatGPT hallucinations.
Yet opposing Trump across the board isn’t a well-thought-out approach either. It leads to the tone-deaf reactions of people like Mark Cuban that protect the status quo and avoid dealing with actual job loss caused by plant relocations to low-wage countries and the impact of such threats on collective bargaining. Which, needless to say, is the real problem.
The UAW is trying to make the distinction between supporting pro-worker tariffs and opposing other anti-worker Trump actions. As UAW president Shawn Fain recently said:
But ending the race to the bottom also means securing union rights for autoworkers everywhere with a strong National Labor Relations Board, a decent retirement with Social Security benefits protected, healthcare for all workers including through Medicare and Medicaid, and dignity on and off the job. The UAW and the working class in general couldn’t care less about party politics; working people expect leaders to work together to deliver results. The UAW has been clear: we will work with any politician, regardless of party, who is willing to reverse decades of working-class people going backwards in the most profitable times in our nation’s history.
For progressive Democrats UAW’s approach will be hard swallow. First, it dilutes the all-out attack on Trump for every action he takes, each of which is viewed as an existential threat to democracy. And secondly, it forces the Democrats to deal with job destruction in the private sector, something they have failed to do for more than a generation.
A better approach would be for left politicians like Sanders to sit down with the UAW to hammer out a common progressive position. Where tariffs protect jobs and remove job relocation from negotiations, they should be supported. Where they kill jobs or simply attack high-wage countries for spite, they should be opposed and replaced by careful negotiations to create a low-tariff level playing field.
Let popular worker support for tariffs teach us that this issue requires problem solving, and support for any tariff should not signal failure on a leftist litmus test. The alternative, pure opposition to tariffs, which is where the entire Democratic Party and the left seems to be headed, is only likely to increase working-class support for MAGA.
Jesus, how did we get into this mess?
Maybe ask the Democrats who didn’t have the guts to challenge Biden’s decision to run again until it was far too late.
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