‘Liberation Day’ Was Even Worse Than Expected
Like a game show host, Trump announced a series of tariff rates on many of America’s major trading partners.
How did he come up with the rates?
It seems by a crude formula: A given nation’s trade deficit with the U.S. divided by that nation’s exports to the U.S.
Trump calls these “reciprocal tariffs,” and the claim is that we are taxing foreign nations at only half the rate they are taxing our imports. The numbers are illusory, however, some of them apparently made up (Brazil at only ten percent?) and others counting a VAT as a net tax on American imports, which it is not.
What timeline are we living in?
This is perhaps the worst economic own goal I have seen in my lifetime. I cannot think of any credentialed economist colleague—Democrat, Republican, or independent—who would endorse it. And I haven’t even mentioned the risk that some foreign nations will retaliate against American exporters, damaging our economy all the more.
The last two months have felt like all the chickens of the last 40 years have come home to roost. Since I became politically aware, I’ve had the lingering suspicion that we would be the ones to bring about our own decline, all because we prioritize money above all else. Americans wanted cheap stuff so badly that we outsourced our own jobs to other countries. Think about that.
Plainly, China is ascendent and America will not be great again. The country of my grandparents’ mythologizing — the country I want to believe in — is gone.