What to do about a president who, at best, is not up to the job.
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Canada, Mexico, and China account for a third of US imports. Donald Trump’s obsession with imposing tariffs will amount to a 25 percent sales tax on just about everything anyone in the US wants to buy. Trump could then take the sudden influx of cash to finance his obsession with deporting millions of undocumented workers, contributing still further to rising prices owing to acute labor shortages in the farming and building sectors.
The effects on the American public and the US economy are likely to make any previous complaints about inflation seem like a tempest in a teapot. Trump’s plan will lead to a surge in personal and small business bankruptcies and could plunge the US into a recession, if not a depression.
We have been there before. A compliant US Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 in hopes of boosting the US economy after the stock market crash of 1929. More than a thousand US economists warned President Herbert Hoover not to do it. Hoover refused to listen. The tariffs ignited a global trade war, and US exports were cut by 67 percent. America entered the Great Depression, and the US economy and everything that depends on it were nearly destroyed.
The depression spread across the planet and arguably accelerated Hitler’s rise to power in Germany and the eventual outbreak of World War II — which caused an estimated 70-85 million deaths. Why anyone would want to repeat that experience is hard to understand, but the fact is that Trump has not made much sense since the inauguration.
Propelled by a narrow victory he has billed as a “landslide,” he has picked an astonishing assortment of inappropriate people to fill his cabinet, and he has thus far strong-armed a GOP-majority Congress to go against its better judgment.
His initial attempt to stop all federal funding and grants to public programs had to be reversed, at least for the time being, because it led to widespread chaos. After the crash between a US military helicopter and an airliner in Washington, DC, Trump’s comments — that the tragedy had been caused by diversity hiring — were proof, if anyone needed it, that Trump simply says whatever comes into his head without bothering to consider the facts or the consequences.
Economists almost universally agree that the tariff surcharges will function as a sales tax on imported goods — a tax ultimately paid by US consumers as US importers raise their prices to cover the increased cost of bringing into the country a wide range of goods.
Trump’s new tariffs may cause a good deal more damage than his first week of blunders. Canada has said that it will respond by setting its own tariffs targeted against $105 billion of US exports. The tariffs would start with a 25 percent surcharge on $20 billion worth of American goods and then increase to cover another $80 billion. Mexico also has plans for a pain-inducing retaliation. China wants to talk things over but is clearly ready to join everyone else if Trump refuses to listen to reason.
Economists almost universally agree that the tariff surcharges will function as a sales tax on imported goods — a tax ultimately paid by US consumers as US importers raise their prices to cover the increased cost of bringing into the country a wide range of goods.
At least initially, the retaliatory tariffs imposed by Canada would target oranges and agricultural goods coming from Florida, bourbon and whisky from Kentucky, and an assortment of other agricultural goods primarily from states that vocally supported Trump and MAGA. American-made beer, shoes, furniture, and appliances are also likely to be hit. The list will grow as Trump’s trade war accelerates and tarnishes America’s global reputation. Trump has also proposed a tariff war against Europe, which he says has treated the US unfairly.
Trump claims that the tariffs are justified because neither Mexico nor Canada has managed to stop drug cartels from selling fentanyl to American addicts. A more likely explanation is that Trump’s dream of mass deportations of mostly Hispanic immigrants is likely to cost the US a fortune. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) noted on NBC’s Meet The Press that while Trump may want to deport millions of people, he can’t do it unless Congress gives him the funds. Trump may hope that the immediate income flowing to the federal government from his tariffs will help finance the detention camps and other infrastructure needed to realize his deportation scheme.
Trump also claims that the tariffs will bring America back to doing its own manufacturing. That ignores the fact that the US no longer has the infrastructure, the equipment, or the technology to produce the kind of manufactured goods that are now being imported, from Christmas tree lights to lithium-ion batteries that power your smartphone and other appliances, to critical parts that make your car work. The US can rebuild its manufacturing capacity and train American workers to run it, but, in realistic terms, it will take years, perhaps decades, to do that. And even then, there is no guarantee that any of it would be economically viable. In the meantime, the impact on the US economy is likely to be catastrophic.
During Trump’s first term as president, experienced advisers managed to keep him from going off the rails. What we have now is Trump unrestrained by advisers, the law, or reason.
The incompetence of the people he has selected to run US government agencies is not an accident. Trump wants a weak cabinet that is forced to depend on him personally — in other words, to serve as yes-men.
The effectiveness of most presidents is largely determined by the quality of the men and women they choose as advisers. The administration’s first two weeks of chaos is proof, if any were needed, that Trump is not bright enough and not knowledgeable enough to do it alone. By accident or design, we have a president who is, at best, simply not up to the job. The question now is what to do about it.
