Trump's Tariffs Liberated Americans From Their Wallets: A Video Roundup
Our early-April collection of clips
One year ago today, Donald Trump unveiled the most aggressive protectionist agenda the United States has pursued in more than a century. He promised it would make Americans wealthier, return factories to American soil, and bring down the cost of living. It was a fantasy dressed up as policy, and a year’s worth of evidence has thoroughly exposed it as such.
Protectionism has always worked the same way, delivering a visible benefit to a concentrated few while quietly taxing everyone else. The winners get a press conference; the rest of us pay more at the register.
Liberation Day followed that same logic, just at a scale and with a level of chaos that had no precedent in modern memory. As Scott Lincicome explained, Trump’s second term represented an appreciably bigger and more radical departure from free trade norms than even his first.
In my latest video for The UnPopulist, I trace the real-world damage across American household budgets—from supermarkets to car dealerships to nurseries—and examine why the promised industrial renaissance never materialized.
The Supreme Court eventually stepped in and struck down the legal basis for the tariffs. But the economic wreckage those tariffs left behind won’t get cleaned up by a court order—and Democrats would do well to treat this moment as an opening to make an affirmative case for free trade rather than simply opposing whatever Trump does next.
For more videos from The UnPopulist, go here: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram.
Last week, Steve Chapman reported for The UnPopulist on how Texas Republicans moved from Islamophobic rhetoric to the systematic use of state power against Muslim citizens—designating a major civil rights organization as a terrorist group, excluding Muslim schools from a voucher program open to every other faith, and banning a Muslim residential development while leaving a comparable Catholic project untouched. In this clip, The UnPopulist’s new video editor, Jacob Repkin, presents Chapman’s argument.
(Don’t forget to pair that with The UnPopulist’s other report on this theme, published earlier this week by Andrew Lewis and Steve Grand of First Five Freedoms, specifically on how Georgia is fighting its Islamophobic leaders.)
Chapman’s piece shows that what distinguishes this moment from ordinary bigotry is that it has reached the politically actionable phase with Texas enacting actual legislation against Muslims. But when a government can strip one minority of its constitutional protections without consequence, every other minority should be asking who’s next.
One more thing from the editors…
We held our first-ever Substack Live yesterday. Senior editor Andy Craig invited Northwestern Professor of Law Paul Gowder to discuss birthright citizenship as the Supreme Court heard oral arguments.
Don’t forget to check out Paul’s piece, published earlier this week in our pages: “Every Argument Against Birthright Citizenship Is Hollow.”
Here is a clip from last night’s conversation:
To watch the full conversation, go here.
This is a format we’re just getting started with. Look for more soon.
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The Democrats have a history of being free trade agnostics and it is only Trump who has rallied them to advocate (for now) for freer trade. Had Trump kept his protectionist tendencies ordered and modest and worked through his Republican Congress I doubt Democrats would have taken much interest at all. It is the vestiges of the free trade Republicans that probably would have threatened his agenda. And his reluctance to depend on his party to support the tariffs.
But, Trump being Trump, had to make the tariffs about himself and to make himself seen as the all powerful decider of things. And then also it was been obvious that he was using tariffs, and the threat of tariffs, to leverage other things from other nations having nothing to do with trade policy at all. It was these things and not free trade that got the Democrats to light their fire over the issue.
So, no, I would not expect the Democrats to become free trade enthusiasts any more than I would expect Republicans to become advocates of rational immigration policies advantageous to the economy.
Bernie Sanders, AOC, et al did not oppose Trump's tariffs on principle--- just on the procedural and legal methods used. The hard core of the Party will always be free trade skeptics.
It's the 40%. Nothing else matters.