What is the Real Purpose of Trump's Tariffs?

The Tariffs Are Intended to Shift the Tax Burden to Working Americans

Trump’s tariffs are intended to increase the tax burden on working Americans so that the tax burden on the very rich can be reduced. The tariffs are not intended to boost American manufacturing. Trump's talk about boosting American manufacturing is just a sales pitch. It is fake just like the rest of Trump’s populist pitch. The real purpose of the tariffs is to shift the tax burden from the wealthy to working Americans and in this, the tariffs have been and continue to be successful. Many economists have taken the sales pitch seriously and have said that the tariffs will not boost American manufacturing. Trump has ignored their criticism because he doesn’t care. Boosting manufacturing was never really the goal.

The Tariffs Have Not Been Designed to Boost Manufacturing

The haphazard, arbitrary and scattershot way that the tariffs have been designed and implemented shows clearly that they are not intended to boost American manufacturing. A tariff that boosts manufacturing must be very carefully planned, and it must be narrowly focused on specific sectors that the tariff can benefit. Trump and his advisors know that. Of course, they do, but they have not designed his tariffs that way. Instead, they have imposed tariffs on all sorts of imported goods in an arbitrary and capricious manner that leaves businesses full of uncertainty. None of this would make sense if the purpose of the tariffs were to promote American manufacturing.

On the other hand, if the purpose of the tariffs is to raise revenue in a way that shifts the tax burden from the wealthy to working Americans, Trump’s approach is very effective. A tariff is a consumption tax just like a sales tax. Ordinary working people spend most of their incomes on consumption because they have to. Rich people, on the other hand, are able to save and invest a larger share of the incomes. Thus, ordinary people are more heavily affected by a tariff than rich people are. The president and his advisors know all of this. So, the idea that their policies are intended to boost American manufacturing is not credible, but the idea that the tariffs are intended to shift the tax burden to working Americans makes perfect sense.

Deporting Immigrants Makes Boosting Manufacturing Impossible But Trump Doesn't Care

Our president’s policy of deporting immigrants also gives away his real intentions. The policy shows that he has never really intended to boost American manufacturing. Deporting immigrants is incompatible with boosting manufacturing because manufacturing needs workers. There are currently almost 400,000 unfilled manufacturing jobs in the United States, and deporting a large share of our work force will not make filling those jobs any easier. Certain key sectors will be especially hard hit by the deportations, and one of those sectors is construction. Around 32.5% of the workers in the construction trades are immigrants. If they are deported, who will build the factories that boosting manufacturing will require? The president and his advisors know this, too. So, we must assume that Trump is lying when he says that he wants to boost American manufacturing.

On the other hand, if the tariffs are intended to increase the share of our government’s revenue that is paid by working Americans instead of the rich, the president’s policies make perfect sense, and in that way, they are already successful. The tariffs are bringing in substantial revenue. Moreover, this understanding of their purpose fits well with the reduction income taxes that were recently passed in the president’s OBBB.

The Tariffs Are Working as They Are Intended to Work

This blog has said many times that Trump’s populism is fake. Neither he nor his party has any interest in improving the lives of working Americans or in creating manufacturing jobs. His real goals are the goals that the Republican Party has pursued at least since Reagan’s days. Republicans want to cut the taxes paid by the wealthy, and they want to eliminate government programs like Medicare that effectively redistribute income from the wealthy to working Americans. The populist pitch is just a way to attract votes to Republican candidates.

Critics of Trump’s tariffs who take his populist pitch seriously are missing the point. Trump and his advisors not clueless. His tariff policy is working exactly as it is intended to work, and working Americans are paying its price.

The Supreme Court Is Becoming a Racist Institution

The Court is Becoming Racist

The Supreme Court is becoming a racist institution because it is dominated by originalists in constitutional interpretation. Originalism is inherently racist although it does not appear to be racist at first glance. Originalism is,

... a theory of the interpretation of legal texts, including the text of the Constitution. Originalists believe that the constitutional text ought to be given the original public meaning that it would have had at the time that it became law.   

On its surface, this sounds like a reasonable idea (although some prominent legal scholars have debunked it), and there is nothing in the definition that appears to be inherently racist. However, the definition says that the Constitution ought to be interpreted in the way that it would have been interpreted by the people who lived in the United States at the time that the Constitution was adopted, and that interpretation was unavoidably racist

The Constitution Was Originally Understood in a Racist Way

The Constitution of the United States was adopted in 1788. At that time, slavery was legal in all of the 13 states. Both law and public opinion recognized that black people could be owned as slaves, and that view was justified by an ideology that said that white people were superior to non-white people both culturally and biologically.

Several of the most prominent members of the Constitutional Convention were slaveholders. George Washington, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson all owned slaves. Alexander Hamilton did not own slaves, but he married into a slave-owning family, and as a young man on the island of Nevis in the Caribbean, he worked for a merchant who imported slaves. The Constitution itself included the provision that only 3/5 of the slaves should be counted in determining the voting population of a state.

There can be no doubt then that the American people of 1788 must have read and understood the Constitution as condoning slavery and the racist ideologies that underlay it. Moreover, the racist understanding of the Constitution persisted for many years. The Dred Scott decision of 1857 showed that just before the Civil War, the Supreme Court still shared the racism of the writers of the Constitution. The 14^th Amendment - ratified in 1868 - established that anyone born in the United States was a citizen entitled to the equal protection of the law, but the decision in Plessy vs. Ferguson, which established the “separate but equal” doctrine, was decided decades after the passage of the 14^th amendment and showed unmistakably that the racism that underlay the “original public meaning” of the Constitution still characterized its interpretation. 

Thus, the original public meaning of the Constitution was unavoidably racist. It was written in a racist society by people who owned slaves.  American racism continued to dominate the interpretation of the Constitution for many years after the Constitution was adopted. Although the writers of the Constitution espoused ideals of universal equality and freedom that continue to inspire us today, they understood those ideals very differently from the way that we understand them today.

Our Understanding of the Constitution Has Changed

Only since the Second World War has our understanding of the Constitution gradually changed. Pres. Truman integrated the armed forces in 1948, and the “Brown” decision that outlawed segregation in schools came in 1954. The Voting Rights Act came in 1965. Today, we have advanced beyond the ideas of our country's eighteenth-century founders. Today, most of us understand the Constitution as being opposed to racism, and the bulk of recent jurisprudence agrees with that view.

Originalist Judges Are Driving a Return to Racism

Now, several Supreme Court Judges are returning to interpreting the Constitution in terms of its original public meaning. Led by Clarence Thomas, our country's most prominent originalist, they want to return to the racist interpretation of the Constitution that prevailed in this country until quite recently.  They want to annul the progress that we have made so painfully. They are turning the Supreme Court back into the racist institution that it once was. 

Stop Talking About Socialism

A Stupid Waste of Time

We are engaged in a stupid and pointless discussion of “socialism” vs. “capitalism.” Candidates on the political left like to call themselves “democratic socialists.” On social media, we see criticisms of ”End Stage Capitalism” from the left, and on the political right, we see people arguing passionately that “socialism has never worked.”

This discussion is stupid and pointless because it gets in the way of discussions of substantive policies. The discussion is particularly bad for the political left because - due to decades of Republican propaganda - the word "socialism" turns off most American voters. By choosing to describe themselves as socialists, leftist politicians actually reduce their chance of being elected to office or of enacting the policies that they favor. Of course, the political right is only too happy to label all of the left's proposal's as "socialist."

Leftists should deal with this situation by dropping all talk of "socialism." Instead of talking about socialism, the left should insist on political debates on the merits of its proposals. Such debates would benefit the left because the left's proposals are really very moderate. Nothing that the political left has proposed is particularly radical or new in the context of American politics. So, instead of claiming that its proposals are revolutionary, the left should stress their moderation. To see just how moderate the left's proposals are, let us examine a few of them.

Moderate Policies That Are Portrayed as "Socialist"

Medicare for All

One signature proposal of the American left is Medicare for All, which would expand Medicare to cover everyone in the United States.  This is hardly revolutionary. It is a proposal to expand a successful existing program, and the reasons for the expansion are the same as the reasons for the initial creation of Medicare.

Medicare was established in 1965 because it had become almost impossible for old people to get health insurance.  Old people were starving or eating cat food because they could not pay their medical bills. So, we established Medicare, and it has become the most successful anti-poverty program in our history.

Today, again, the cost of health care is driving millions of Americans into poverty.  Health emergencies are the most common cause of personal bankruptcy in our country, and every day, more of our people cannot afford adequate health insurance.  To solve this problem, the left proposes that we expand a very successful program to cover more people. That is not revolutionary. On the contrary, it is precisely the sort of pragmatic, incremental change that has always characterized American politics at its best.

Free College

Another signature proposal of the left is free post-secondary education at public colleges and universities. This is completely unrevolutionary. In fact, we used to have it, but under prodding from the Radical Right’s anti-tax crusaders, we gave it up. When I attended the University of California in 1958, the tuition was free, and the fees were $140 per semester. State universities in other states were just as inexpensive.  That was also the period of the GI Bill under which military veterans could have even these modest expenses paid by the federal government.

In the years since, radical rightist anti-tax crusaders have persuaded us gradually to reduce the states’ support for higher education and shifted the burden more and more onto the students. We have gone so far in that direction that the left’s proposal now seems revolutionary to some people, but it is not. It is merely a restoration of the normal, American way to pay for the higher education of our people.

Green New Deal

Politicians on the left of the Democratic Party have proposed the idea of a Green New Deal.  It proposes large investments in green energy projects that would reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and help to save our planet from global warming. At the same time, in theory, the projects would create millions of good jobs.

The Green New Deal sounds revolutionary, but in fact, it continues our long-standing policy of promoting the development of energy sources.  We have always believed that adequate supplies of energy were crucial to the development of our economy, and the Green New Deal merely redirects our energy policy toward promoting new energy sources that fit our country’s current needs in a time when the use of fossil fuels is endangering our country and its economy.

Today, we spend enormous amounts subsidizing the fossil fuel industries, as we have for many years. The Green New Deal proposes that we continue to subsidize energy production but that in doing so, we should focus our subsidies on green energy rather than fossil fuels. Today, the climate crisis has given rise to new needs, and we must shift our policies to meet them. Again, that is not revolutionary. It is precisely the sort of pragmatic, incremental change that has always made our country successful.

Let's Stop Wasting Time

Let us not waste our time in stupid arguments about socialism. Let us focus on real policy questions with real implications for people’s lives. We on the left should stop using the word "socialism," which turns off most voters, which has nothing to do with any real policy proposals, and which contributes nothing to advancing the cause of making life better for all Americans

The Movement Has Choices to Make

A Successful Rally

The rally at Houdini Plaza last Thursday evening was a great success, and the organizers should be proud of what they accomplished. The rally was part of a national movement to “make some good trouble” and to express resistance to our Grifter-in-Chief’s campaign to destroy our democracy. An article in The Dairyland Patriot expressed the goal of the rally well in the words of John Lewis.

My philosophy is very simple. When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, say something! Do something! Get in trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble.

The article also quoted Emily Tseffos, one of the organizers of the rally and one of its speakers.

There’s a bridge in Selma, Alabama. … [It is] just concrete and steel. But in 1965, it became sacred ground. John Lewis – just 25 years old – led hundreds across it. They were met with tear gas, horses, and clubs.  And they kept walking. That’s good trouble. Necessary trouble. The kind we’re called to right now.

So let’s march like Selma, … Rise like Stonewall (the 1969 protests that marked the beginning of the modern gay rights movement). … Strike like Amazon workers. … Dream like the people who know this country has always been remade from the bottom up. Because good trouble isn’t history – it’s a mandate.” 

A Weakness Revealed

These are beautiful and powerful words, and in my view, they are completely correct. We must organize and act. However, Emily's words also reveal a key weakness of the rally and of the movement it represented. The movement is an expression of national revulsion against the policies and actions of the Trump administration, but a successful, political movement cannot be only against something. It must be for something as well. The march across the bridge in Alabama had a goal, which was true freedom for Black people in the United States. The Stonewall protests, and the strikes at Amazon also had clear, positive goals.

The movement represented by the rally has no such clear goals. The people who attended the rally have goals: some are fighting for fair treatment of immigrants; others are fighting for fair treatment of women; still others are fighting for Medicare for All or affordable childcare; other goals were represented, as well. But the movement itself has not coalesced around a set of clear positive goals, and it must do so if it is to succeed.

Hard Choices to Make

Selecting a clear set of positive goals will require some hard choices. A movement cannot fight for everything at the same time. It must demand a small number of clearly defined specific changes. So, this movement at this time and in this place will have to choose, and it will have to put some worthy goals aside for another time. 

Moreover, an effective American political movement should also link somehow to our electoral system, which means that the demands of this movement should point to policy positions that congressional candidates can run on in 2026. It also means that the movement's demands should be capable of being presented in a way that will allow them to attract broad support from the voters.

If the movement’s demands do not point to policy positions for candidates, the movement must expect to reach its goals through civil disobedience. The Montgomery Bus Boycott is an example of the successful use of that strategy as is Gandhi’s March to the Sea to make salt. However, effective civil disobedience is very difficult, and civil disobedience that extends over a long period of time requires an enormous commitment from its adherents. A movement that can make use of the electoral system can achieve its goals much more easily.

So, the movement to “make some good trouble” has choices to make. What will its demands be, and how will it pursue them? It must make those choices if it is to be effective in bringing about change.

Trump’s Narrowing Support Will Bring MAGA Down

Trump Maintains Control by Driving Republican Opponents From the Party

Trump’s support is gradually narrowing because he demands absolute loyalty while at the same time hurting his supporters. Any Republican who opposes him at any point is subject to his revenge, and inevitably, such opposition does arise because each Senator or Representative represents a particular constituency with particular interests. For example, Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, recently retired from the Senate rather than vote for Trump’s Big Beautiful bill. As a recent article on MSN said,

This is a pattern visible in the departures of Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, Mitt Romney, Mike Gallagher, Justin Amash, Denver Riggleman, Mark Sanford, Will Hurd and any Republican who “dared to deviate from Trump's whims.” 

The same article tells us that

Already a Trump-aligned organization - MAGA Kentucky PAC - was launching a $1-million ad campaign against “traitor” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kent.), for having the gall to oppose Trump’s bill.

This week, yet another Republican congressman has decided to resign rather than support Trump. Mr. Bacon represents a district that went for Kamala Harris in 2024. So, his retirement provides an opportunity for a Democrat to win another seat in the House of Representatives.

Trump's Support Becomes Narrower

This strategy of driving people who don’t support Trump out of the party maintains his rigid control of the party, but it also narrows the range of his support. Meanwhile, his insistence on carrying out policies that hurt the interests of important groups of Republicans cuts into the party’s support from voters and campaign donors. An example is the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. A recent poll tells us

A new poll from Gallup Friday shows a steep drop among Republicans wanting immigration levels into the U.S. decreased – falling from 88 percent in 2024 down to 48 percent in June. The same survey showed an uptick in Republicans who see immigration as having a positive effect on the U.S.

We can see the process of narrowing at work also in a bipartisan decision in a Senate committee to reject the president’s proposed cuts to the budget of NASA. It is easy to see why some Republican senators might oppose cuts to programs that support a large number of well-paid jobs in the senators’ states.

American companies are having a terrible time dealing with the uncertainty and changeability of Trump’s tariff policies. A recent New York Times article  described the problems that the management of Eagle Creek – a luggage manufacturer based in Steamboat Springs, Colorado - is facing. The article says,  

Three shipping containers with about $240,000 worth of the manufacturer’s goods were set to arrive [from Indonesia] at the Port of Los Angeles on July 30, just before the new tariffs are expected to kick in. A delay of even a few days could result in additional fees of at least $52,000 — and up to $75,000 if Mr. Trump followed through on imposing an additional tariff of 10 percent on countries aligned with the policies of BRICS nations, a group that includes Indonesia.

Although it wasn’t clear whether the on-again, off-again tariffs that Mr. Trump had just unveiled would hold, or whether he was bluffing, executives at Eagle Creek realized the company needed to have enough cash on hand to pay the tariff bill.

Eagle Creek has to deal with this sort of uncertainty every day, and it costs the company a lot of money. So, imagine now what is likely to happen in Republican politics when Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger starts to talk about Republican alternatives to the CEO of Eagle Creek, to soybean farmers in Illinois and to vegetable growers in California.

Anti-Trump Republican Politicians Will Gain Support

The political ambitions of the anti-Trump Republican politicians will align with the economic interests of many Republican voters and campaign donors. Although, some voters are so committed to the MAGA vision that they will continue to support Trump, others who have voted Republican all of their lives will find that they do not have to leave their party to find candidates who support their interests, or they may turn to a third party. A few will vote for Democrats. We can see these divisions starting to form in a small community in Nebraska where a health center is scheduled to close. We should see more such divisions in the 2026 elections. Next year is not going to be dull.

Rule Through Fear: The Mark of An Authoritarian Regime

Fear as a Means of Maintaining Political Control

Pres. Trump is trying to rule by making us afraid. The use of fear as a means of political control is a hallmark of fascist and other authoritarian regimes including his. An authoritarian regime uses fear because it cannot arrest all of its people. Somehow, it must persuade most of them to acquiesce quietly and not to resist, and it can do that by making the people afraid to resist openly. Fear persuades them to keep their heads down and their mouths shut. Trump is attempting to do just that. He is trying to persuade us to keep our heads down and our mouths shute.

Trump's Tactics For Instilling Fear

Using a Criminal Gang to Kidnap People

In a previous post on this blog, I said that ICE was a criminal gang, and indeed, it is, but why should Trump make use of a criminal gang? The answer is that he uses the criminal gang to instill fear in us. Masked ICE agents swoop down unpredictably and kidnap people off the street. No one knows when they will appear or whom they will arrest. So, people are afraid. Most of us know that we are citizens and should have nothing to fear, but ICE arrests people first and asks questions later. So, we are afraid.

Announcing Policies Designed to Create Uncertainty and Fear

Recently, the Department of Justice issued a memo directing U. S. attorneys to pursue revoking the citizenship of naturalized citizens “to reduce crime.” This announcement is designed to induce fear. No naturalized citizen knows when the government may try to revoke his/her citizenship, and so, everyone is afraid. Everyone prefers to avoid even the possibility of being arrested or ensnared in a lawsuit. So, most people keep their heads down and their mouths shut.

Threatening to Withhold Funds

Trump’s attacks on universities serve the same purpose. Universities should be centers of criticism of Trump’s policies, but his attacks instill fear in scholars who depend on government funding for the research that advances their careers. So, the scholars, too, learn to avoid criticizing any policies of the Trump administration. In addition, Trump announced recently that colleges and universities that allow what he called “illegal protests” will lose their federal funding, and that students who participate in such protests will be arrested. 

Threatening to Proceed Against Law Firms

Trump is also using this tactic against law firms. A recent New York Times article, quotes the legal scholar Thomas Vladeck saying:

What the Trump administration is doing is not just about specific lawyers representing unpopular clients, but is rather far more ominous: The administration is acting in ways that will necessarily chill a growing number of lawyers from participating in any litigation against the federal government, regardless of who the client is.

That, in turn, will make it harder for many clients adverse to the Trump administration to find lawyers to represent them — such that at least some cases either won’t be brought at all or won’t be brought by the lawyers best situated to bring them.

Threatening Political Consequences

Trump also instills fear in members of his party in Congress. He does so by threatening to support candidates to oppose them in primary elections. This tactic allows him to force members of Congress to support his policies. We saw this tactic at work in the recent debate over his Big Beautiful Bill.  Many senators and representatives opposed the bill in debate, but they voted for it anyway. The exceptions were senators who had decided not to run for reelection in 2026.

Soon It Will Be Too Late

Thus, like any other authoritarian ruler, Trump works to rule through fear. Fortunately, his apparatus of fear is not yet complete, and we must continue to resist. If we don't resist now, the apparatus of fear will grow stronger each day, and soon, it will be too late.

Don't Sacrifice Our Democracy on the Altar of Religious Differences or Middle Eastern Policy

American Elections Should Be About Making America More Just and Equitable

Democrats should campaign on and vote for policies that benefit Americans, and that means focusing on reducing the outlandish disparities in wealth and income that plague our society. We will have an opportunity to make progress in that direction in 2026, but we will be able to take advantage of that opportunity only if we maintain a razor-sharp focus on the issues that really matter. Our president is a master at finding issues that divide American liberals, and we must beware of falling into his traps, which have the potential to destroy American democracy and set back the cause of social justice for decades.

One of Trump's traps is his promoting of division over antisemitism and Israel's war in Gaza. Democrats are deeply split over the war. At one extreme, we have people who treat any criticism of Israel's policies as unacceptable antisemitism, and at the other extreme, we have people who deny the right of the State of Israel to exist at all. In between, we have a wide range of views. Trump is exacerbating the division among Democrats by his attack on antisemitism on university campuses. His hope is that we will be too divided among ourselves to mount effective congressional campaigns in 2026. If we fail to do so, we run a real risk that Trump will succeed in destroying American democracy and the rule of law.

Democrats Must Stick Together To Win

We must not be taken in. We must stick together.  Donald Trump and his MAGA movement are on the verge of destroying both democracy and the rule of law in the United States, but Democrats may prevent that from happening by winning the midterm elections next year. To do that, we will have to unite around a progressive program that benefits all working people in our country. Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Zohran Mamdani are pointing the way. We can unite around the domestic policies that they and others have proposed.

Take a Leaf From Obama's Campaign Strategy

The victory of Mamdani in the mayoral primary election highlights both the possibilities and the dangers. He has proposed concrete policies to tackle real problems in New York City. I may not agree with all of his proposals, and in any case, policies that work in New York may not work in the rest of the country. However, Mamdani's ideas can form a basis for discussion among liberals. 

On the other hand, Mamdani is Muslim and takes a pro-Palestinian position on the war in Gaza, and he risks splitting the party. To avoid that, he should take a leaf from Obama's campaign strategy. Obama did not stress his blackness in his presidential campaigns. He ran as a president for all the people, and that strategy turned out to be a winning one.  Similarly, a Democratic candidate for national office in 2026 or 2028 should run as a candidate for all of us.

We Have a Lot To Do

We have much to do in our country. We must adopt environmental policies to minimize the effects of climate change. We must save Social Security and Medicare. We must find a way to fund post-secondary education in a way that does not saddle young people with crushing debts. We must find a way to provide affordable childcare. And we must find ways of mitigating the huge disparity in the distributions of wealth and income is destroying our democracy.

If we lose in 2026, we will lose what may be our last opportunity to make progress on these issues, and we may lose our democracy as well. So, we need to get together to win. We know that we will never agree on every issue, but we should not sacrifice the well-being of our own people on the altar of the Gaza War or the bombing of Iran. We should fight this election on the grounds of domestic policy.