Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
“President Donald Trump said on Monday he was not looking at a pause on tariffs to allow for negotiations with trading partners but said he would talk to China, Japan and other countries about the duties… Trump reiterated his threat to add another 50% tariff on Chinese imports unless that country withdraws its threat to add a 34% tariff on its goods.” Reuters
Here’s our recent coverage of the tariffs. The Flip Side
The left is critical of the tariffs, arguing that they are damaging the economy.
“[The projected revenue numbers from the tariffs] translate into $4,000 to $5,000 per household annually. They are much larger than any tax increases that Presidents Clinton, Obama, or Biden put on the table. Also, unlike their tax proposals, which were heavily tilted toward increasing taxes on the wealthy, Trump’s tariffs will overwhelmingly hit middle-income households… This sort of hit to pocketbooks could lead to a recession, or at least drastically slower economic growth.”
Dean Baker, The Nation
“A majority of CEOs, 69%, now say they expect a recession. That comes just days after JPMorgan’s economics team raised their recession probability to 60%. The administration has tried to brush off these recession fears, sending out their top officials to defend Trump’s tariffs and pretend like there’s nothing to see here…
“Trump’s ultra-wealthy Cabinet members, like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, are taking to the airwaves to tell middle-class and working-class Americans, entrepreneurs, people who have spent their entire lives building up their family businesses, that ‘there’s nothing to worry about; this had to be done.’…
“Americans can’t fall for these lies… What we’re witnessing is a self-induced war that Trump, with the backing of the Republican Party, started.”
Joe Scarborough, MSNBC
“Some foreign companies may indeed respond to the tariffs by building factories in the U.S. to maintain their presence in a crucial market. But many others are simply too small, or too integrated into existing supply chains, to make that move…
“Where the millions of American workers will come from to screw together iPhones or make car parts is also a mystery, especially given the president’s opposition to large-scale immigration. Factories in the U.S. are already struggling to find workers; the manufacturing sector has hundreds of thousands of vacant openings.”
Michael Schuman, The Atlantic
“You wouldn’t necessarily know it if you’ve been listening to the president, but the Constitution assigns the power to regulate foreign commerce and impose tariffs to Congress, not the White House. So why does Trump believe that he has the power to do what he’s doing? The answer is that for almost a century, Congress has ceded much of its authority to regulate foreign commerce to the president…
“Congress’ abdication of responsibility allowed presidents to usurp that power and impose their own will on our global trading partners. And, as we see with the tumbling stock marking, putting such decisions in the hands of one person can bring potentially disastrous results… Congress [needs to] reassert its constitutional authority and claw back the power it should have never given [away].”
Jessica Levinson, MSNBC
The right is divided.
The right is divided.
“A large part of the reason Donald Trump was elected to his second term as president was because he convinced a majority of the country that the economic status quo was not sustainable… The message resonated, because instinctively, Americans know we can't keep racking up these trillion-plus dollar deficits while simultaneously hollowing out the engine of our GDP by transitioning to a service economy instead of a manufacturing economy… If not tariffs, then what?…
“Yes, the stock market losses are real to those who had to cash out or rely on it for immediate retirement income. To most in the market, it's a paper loss. It's not real until cashed out and realized. In six months, if Trump's plan works and the foreign investments and resulting job growth here, the increased energy production, and if Congress passes a permanent tax cut, the market might hit 50,000, and the past month would be a distant memory.”
Duane Patterson, Hot Air
“[We have] seen quite a few announcements of major new investments since his tariff plans were unveiled. More than 70 countries have already approached the White House to talk about mutual tariff-reduction deals… Rolling back illegal immigration will also help boost working-class wages. People claim illegal aliens ‘do the jobs Americans won’t do,’ but it’s more accurate to say they ‘do the jobs Americans won’t do at absurdly low wages.’ Progressives once appreciated this basic fact.”
Glenn H. Reynolds, New York Post
“Mr. Trump should give a globally televised address announcing to the world that the U.S. is ready to drop its tariffs and industry subsidies to zero tomorrow on any nation that does the same. This would be the ultimate reciprocal tariff policy. President Trump and the U.S. would regain the moral high ground in trade disputes. It would be enlightening to see which supposedly ‘free trade’ nations accept Mr. Trump’s challenge. Who better to pull off what could become the greatest Art of the Deal negotiation in world history?”
Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore, Wall Street Journal
Others argue, “If the problem is that free trade makes China rich and dangerous, why are we punishing Taiwan, when China’s conquering it would strengthen the PRC? Why is the White House, amid a crackdown on foreign trade, protecting the Chinese-owned ByteDance from congressionally mandated divestment in TikTok? Why are we punishing countries such as Vietnam, which have stolen jobs from China?…
“More broadly, if the problem is that we’re indiscriminately using free trade to benefit our own consumers in the short term rather than strategically using it to strengthen our global position in the long term, then slapping higher tariffs on our friends than on our enemies — hitting Israel and Ukraine harder than we’ve hit Russia or Iran or Afghanistan — is positively counterproductive. Yet that’s what the second Trump administration is doing.”
Dan McLaughlin, National Review
