By Steven Flagg
Guest Column
Donald Trump told America he was in love with tariffs.
In a June 2019 CNBC interview he said, “Tariffs are a beautiful thing when you’re the piggy bank, when you have all the money.”
“To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff. It’s my favorite word.” He told us in a speech before the Economic Club of Chicago in October 2024.
And during a discussion with Joe Rogan in October 2024, Trump said, “To me, the most beautiful word… in the dictionary today and any day is the word ‘tariff.’ It’s more beautiful than love.”
Overwhelmingly economists, that ugly elite, dared to tell us what tariffs would do to the US and world economies.
16 Nobel Prize-winning economists in June 2024, signed an open letter warning that Trump’s economic plans, particularly his proposed tariffs, could “reignite inflation” in the United States.
In an October 2024 Economist article, Paul Krugman warned that “What the tariffs would do is shrink our economy. They would cause us to sell less of the goods we currently export — that is, stuff we’re relatively good at producing — and more stuff we aren’t that good at producing. The effect would be to make the economy less efficient and poorer.”
Still voters focused narrowly on the price of living and chose to believe that Trump was bluffing and would only use tariffs as a negotiating tool. Some tool; the damage done from stock market values to consumer confidence to inflation expectations just since “Liberation Day” will take months and likely years to undo even if tariffs are later withdrawn through negotiations.
The stock market lost the entire last year of market gains but has rebounded, at least temporarily, when the mercurial Trump paused reciprocal tariffs except for China for 30, 60, 90 days but who really knows. When Trump took office the average tariff rate was 2.5 percent. With the added tariffs the rate will go to 25.3 percent and cost the average American family $4,400/ year.
Executive order 14257 establishing reciprocal tariffs, which is now on pause, would make the burden much worse. The Trump tariff policy lacks common sense, and is dumb, reckless, and destructive. Tariffs simply put are a blunt weapon of economic mass destruction.
The loss of wealth from Trump’s tariffs is coming at the peak time for baby boomer retirements with an estimated 4.2 million retiring in 2025. Major losses in retirement accounts early in retirement can lead to some terrible future outcomes. Further, Trump’s tariff policy amounts to a national sales tax on every product we import. It is a regressive tax that falls hardest on our poorest citizens who live from paycheck to paycheck.
So, while we watch the carnage, let us ask what happened to Trump’s campaign promise to reduce the cost of living on day one? For those who just wanted to see lower food prices, an opportunity to own a home, get to the next paycheck, or pay for your daughter’s dental work, it does not look like he heard your vote.
And while Trump has threatened tariffs since he was elected, we did not get any warning about the amount and extent of the tariffs. We saw no plan nor analysis regarding the return for our short-term pain. The way the reciprocal tariff levels are calculated makes little sense for so many reasons, from what constitutes a trade deficit to the formula used to determine the reciprocal tariff rate.
Donald Trump received 49.8 percent of the popular vote. Does that sound like a mandate to enact 111, and still counting, executive orders, fire thousands of federal workers without explaining why, eliminate foreign aid causing starvation and slowing a response to medical threats, blackmail legal firms through executive action that threatens their livelihood and ability to represent clients, dismantle long term alliances that have been successful at keeping the world safe for 80 years, deport individuals without due process, erase the past through actions disguised as dismantling of DEI, and now exact the largest tax increase in US history all without any action by Congress? Frenetic, thoughtless, dumb, dangerous, and without precedence.
Unilateral action is the province of dictators and kings. And while we are distracted with a mounting self-inflicted economic crisis of potentially catastrophic proportions created by America’s wannabe king, the amateurs in charge of America’s national security are still discussing top secret operation plans on Signal. Just saying.