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On the subject of Trump’s proposed tariffs.

There’s more than just costs to beware of.

They will anger our friends,

Which won’t work in the end

If we want to keep playing world sheriff.

After the end of World War II, there was a general consensus that tariffs had exacerbated the impacts of the Great Depression. As a result, the nations of the free world created institutions that were biased in favor of free trade. Tariffs, in that regime, were only a legitimate tool to force other countries to open their markets. They could not be pursued as an end in and of themselves.

The new system worked. Free trade created new efficiencies that brought billions of people out of poverty and kept the cost of goods low. Inflation disappeared as a problem for a generation. But while the benefits of globalization as a whole far exceeded the costs, they were not distributed equally. Right-wing parties, at the behest of wealthy businessmen, prevented governments from creating adequate welfare states, and workers in America and Europe saw their wages stagnate.

The 2024 election will feature two different views of tariffs that are based on the new global realities. Biden’s approach is “friend-shoring.” He wants to use tariffs in a limited way–to prevent America from becoming dangerously dependent on China for goods that have a clear nexus to national security. Trump’s vision, on the other hand, is America as it existed in 1950, minus the extremely heavy taxes on the wealthy. He wants to use tariffs to make America totally economically self-sufficient, regardless of the cost that would impose on American consumers. It is the kind of import substitution scheme that one commonly finds in countries that are run either by populists or dictators. Or both.

From an economic perspective, the British government ran the American colonies as, wouldn’t you know it, colonies, the most obvious example being the Navigation Acts. The second-rate status of the colonists was, in the end, the principal cause of the American Revolution. After the new nation had been established, it made sense to protect industry for two reasons: first, to provide a viable source of revenue for the government; and second, to shield infant businesses from competition that had historically been unfair. The latter is the classic case in which even economists who prize efficiency above all can support some measure of protection.

But once established, the tariff long outstayed its welcome. By the 1830s, it was the source of great sectional friction, and the nation’s first secession crisis, although everyone knew that it was largely a proxy for the greater issue of slavery. The tariff question revolved around money and numbers, so it could be compromised; slavery was a moral issue which could not. Still, protection continued to be a source of friction between agricultural and industrial interests.

By the 1880s and 1890s, the tariff was once again front and center in American politics. Northern manufacturers insisted that it permitted them to pay higher wages to their workers but did not behave that way in practice. The public noticed. The GOP largely lost the election of 1892 over the tariff, and only prevailed in 1896 because the 1893 depression and the currency issue took precedence in the minds of most of the voters.

Tariffs started to take on different meanings in the 20th and 21st centuries. For a discussion of that topic, see my next post.

Next to liberals and illegal immigrants, Trump thinks China is Public Enemy #1. In order to keep Chinese ambitions in check, he will need allies. The basis for his “America First” foreign policy, however, is that our allies are just grifters. As a result, he plans to take steps–abandoning Ukraine and possibly NATO, leaving the Paris Agreement, and imposing universal tariffs–that are designed to alienate our friends, both in Asia and Europe.

I have to assume that Trump believes that American military might and markets are so important to our friends, we can order them about as we see fit. If we make the mistake of electing him, it won’t take long before he is disabused of that notion. “America First,” in practice, means America alone.

Rising auto and property insurance rates are one of the biggest components of today’s inflation rate. Regardless of how you may feel about the insurance companies, this is not greedflation; it is based on objective factors, including the increasing complexity of cars and the effects of climate change. What conclusions should we draw from this?

Higher insurance costs are more akin to a tax increase than a driver of next-level inflation, because they reduce demand for other goods and services. In addition, they have no logical relationship with interest rates. As with, say, food price increases caused by bad weather, there is no reason for the Fed to base any portion of its decisions on interest rates on them.

When will you know if Trump plans to operate as a dictator or not? Most likely, when he is confronted with federal court orders enjoining various of his new, radical immigration policies. If he obeys them, you can probably breathe a sigh of relief; if he doesn’t, on the basis that the president can do no wrong (particularly when he is carrying out a perceived mandate from the American people), you can expect the worst.

As for me, I have very little faith that Trump 2.0, after his most recent experiences with the law, will pay any attention to court orders that he dislikes. And don’t expect his Republican buddies to do anything about it. Some of them will be cheering him on, while the rest will grumble a bit in private, but keep quiet in public for fear of offending the base.

If you accept Marx’ statement about history repeating itself twice, you have to be a bit worried, because January 6 bears a significant resemblance to the Beer Hall Putsch. What would be the 21st century equivalent of the Reichstag fire?

It would almost certainly be either the “invasion” at the border or a violent demonstration in a city in a blue state. Either could provide the pretext for Trump to use emergency powers to stifle dissent and destroy American liberal democracy.

Given the legal peril that Trump currently faces, there is little reason to doubt that he will call for violence (probably in his usual facially equivocal way) if he loses in November. Under other circumstances, the planning for this event with friendly state and local officeholders and militia leaders would have already begun. The polls, however, predict a Trump victory. That will have retarded any kind of planning for an insurrection.

In the short run, therefore, the state of polling at the present time is actually a good thing for the nation. If Biden wins, however, the sense of outrage will be that much more intense. A spontaneous uprising is less likely to succeed than a meticulously planned one, but it might be more violent.

For years, thanks largely to the McConnell Project, it has felt like the Democrats were in office, but not in power. While the blue agenda was blocked by the judiciary and the lack of votes in the Senate, reactionaries have been running wild in the red states. Nothing could be done about it without changing the political system itself, which only Trump and his allies were willing to contemplate, and the president didn’t appear to be doing anything to fight back. It was demoralizing. That, even more than inflation or Gaza or the bad polls, was the source of the blue team blues.

SOTU will have changed that. It has given the blue team hope. The widening divisions between Biden and Bibi, which I predicted months ago, will help rally the base. Trump is starting to get more scrutiny, and his first trial starts in two weeks. Things are looking up.

Trump was TikTok’s biggest critic while in office, but he has just changed sides at a time when both Republicans and Democrats are moving forward to require the sale of the company. It remains to be seen whether he has the clout to tank this bipartisan legislation in the same manner as the border bill. What can we learn from this experience?

Being both a principled reactionary and a Trump ally can be a very difficult experience, because the man on golf cart has a mind like a gumball machine (I think that’s a Mitt Romney line); he changes his positions based, not on ideology, but on personal whims, self-interest, and the identity of the last person who talked to him. If you want to remain on his good side, you have to be willing to abandon your most cherished beliefs on a moment’s notice, while vehemently denying you are doing exactly that. Not everyone can pull that off–don’t you agree, Mr. Graham?

Viktor Orban made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago on Friday to see the man on golf cart. According to Orban, Trump assured him that he would cut off aid to Ukraine, which obviously doesn’t come as any big surprise. But what else did they talk about? Did Orban give Trump a primer on how to impose an illiberal regime on blue America? In particular, did he give him some instructions on how to shut down the NYT, the WaPo, CNN, and all of the other left-leaning media?

As far as I know, Orban doesn’t own any hotels or casinos, and he doesn’t play golf, so what else would they talk about? Hungarian cuisine?

Donald Trump wants Biden to be impeached for two reasons: first, simply for revenge; and second, for false equivalence. It will permit him to argue on the campaign trail that Biden is in the same ethical boat as he is. Since Trump wants it, the base demands it, too. As we know, the base usually gets what it wants.

But a frivolous impeachment followed by a quick acquittal will only bring shame to the GOP, alienate swing voters, and further endanger the seats of GOP House members in Biden districts. That doesn’t make political sense.

How will the leadership square the circle? By talking vaguely about how the investigation is ongoing, and about how compelling the evidence is, without actually doing anything. It’s dishonest, sure, but it’s the GOP, so what do you expect?

On the Biden congressional speech.

It’s the center he’s trying to reach.

Just in case you forgot,

The Trump years weren’t so hot.

He’s the guy who said we should eat bleach.

Somehow, I don’t think that approach will work with the PM of the Jewish state.

The 17th century philosopher Blaise Pascal argued that the rational man believes in God out of self-interest and intellectual modesty; if an atheist is wrong about God’s existence, the consequences to him are terrifying, but if a believer is wrong, the consequences are negligible. It makes a certain amount of sense in a cynical way.

But apply that reasoning to a second Trump presidency. It is perfectly possible–even likely, given the vagaries of his personality–that Trump wouldn’t use his emergency powers and control of the military to suppress dissent and eliminate all of the checks and balances in our government. You cannot say that with absolute certainty, however. Is that a gamble you really want to take?

If any of my readers are on the fence about the election, please keep that in mind.