Trump’s nonsensical, harmful tariff policies

In the bizarro world of American politics, Republicans who usually rail against tax increases and warn of executive overreach are completely silent as President Donald Trump unilaterally imposes massive tax increases on imported goods.

This past week brought only further confirmation of the mindless and harmful nature of the president’s tax hike-spree.

With American farmers struggling to find consumers as a result of countries imposing retaliatory tariffs on American goods, the president declared he would be using tariff revenue to bailout American farmers.

“We’re going to take some of that tariff money that we made, we’re going to give it to our farmers, who are, for a little while, going to be hurt until the tariffs kick into their benefit,” the president told reporters on Thursday.

Yes, the president is essentially imposing higher taxes on Americans and then using that tax revenue to offset the harms those tax hikes brought in the first place.

It’s a pointless cycle that has, as a bonus, only contributed to inflation remaining stubbornly well above the 2% target of the Federal Reserve.

It’s a classic case of a wannabe central planner not understanding economic tradeoffs. Sure, some domestic jobs may be saved or produced thanks to these tariffs. But many more will be lost as a consequence.

The latest estimates from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation projects that over the next decade, the president’s imposed and threatened tariffs will result in a lower Gross Domestic Product and lower capital stock, as well as 825,000 fewer full-time jobs.

Meanwhile, in a bid to save tariffs from legal challenges, the Trump administration is now arguing before the Supreme Court, “the President and his Cabinet officials have determined that the tariffs are promoting peace and unprecedented economic prosperity, and that the denial of tariff authority would expose our nation to trade retaliation without effective defenses and thrust America back to the brink of economic catastrophe.”

Yes, the administration is actually asserting that they must be allowed to keep imposing tariffs to stop other countries from retaliating against it for imposing tariffs.

Further down the brief,  the administration also asserts it’s “catastrophic” for foreigners to own “$26 trillion more of U.S. assets than Americans owned of foreign assets.” But then it touts the president’s deals: “[T]o rectify past imbalances, those partners have agreed to make trillions of dollars of purchases and investments in the U.S. economy…”

So which is it? Is it a catastrophe that the world is investing here or not?

Obviously, both America and the world are richer thanks to global trade and freer trade. Both will be poorer as long as president seeks to punish Americans for buying abroad.