My daughter is the vice-president for sales of a designer eyewear company whose products are made in a European Union country. So she's got a vested interest in how Trump's tariffs turn out, since the European Union has been slammed with a 20% tariff on exports to the United States.
There's no difference politically between my daughter and me.
We're both avid progressives who couldn't stand Trump before his rollout of an incredibly misguided attempt to undo international trade through so-called "reciprocal" tariffs that actually aren't that at all -- since Trump's deeply flawed simplistic formula used to come up with his new tariffs has nothing to do with the tariffs other countries are charging the United States, so it isn't possible to call what Trump has done "reciprocal."
We talked by phone tonight.
My daughter, who lives in southern California, went to a Hands Off! rally in Santa Ana today, while my wife attended a Salem rally. (Me, I spent the afternoon mowing the fields on our rural property, since it was a nice day and rain is coming tomorrow.) Both of the women in my life came away energized by the protests against Trump's policies, all of which suffer from the not-so-minor defect of being totally crazy.
Where my daughter and I differ is how long Trump will persist with his insane tariffs. We agree that they make no sense. The United States has been doing just fine under the current system of international trade. We're a rich country with a low unemployment rate and a declining rate of inflation.
It isn't as if Americans are pleading to be able to work in a factory making clothes or shoes. China, Vietnam, and other Asian countries can produce these things more efficiently and less expensively than we can. So this is an example of why Trump's desire to have everything Americans need or want made in the United States is such a stupid notion.
Which gets me to how my daughter has a different view of Trump's tariffs than I do. She thinks that Trump will do away with the tariffs in a few months. I believe that Trump will be more stubborn, keeping them for considerably longer, maybe well into until 2026.
But I hope my daughter is correct. And she may well be. I can see business executives deluging Trump with complaints about what his tariffs are costing them. The only way corporations would spend large amounts of money on building plants that build what currently is being produced in other countries is if they can be sure that the tariffs will remain in place permanently, or at least for many years.
However, Trump is notoriously mercurial. He changes his mind on a whim. So it's unlikely that many corporations are going to move their production to the United States when they know that the reason for doing this -- Trump's massive tariffs on imports -- could disappear at any time.
Thus Trump is in a bind. The only way to achieve his Make Everything in America dream is to keep the tariffs in place for quite a few years. Yet if he does this, a recession (or even depression) is likely, not only in this country, but internationally. That will lead to a big Democratic victory in the 2026 midterms and deepen Trump's reputation as one of the worst presidents ever.
My argument for Trump sticking with his tariffs was pretty simple: he's motivated largely by a desire for revenge and retribution. Tump may sincerely believe that other countries have been ripping us off economically, though there's little evidence of this. So I can see him keeping the tariffs in place to punish our trading partners, even if the United States is hurt just as badly.
Soon we'll see who was right. I hope my daughter is, because the tariffs are a self-imposed attack on a key foundation of our nation's economic success: international trade.
Comments