
Trump's tariffs are reckless – but they hold a key lesson for Democrats
To tariff or not to tariff? Today's tweet-length political discourse pretends this is a binary choice. Donald Trump has pitched across-the-board import levies as a panacea to rebuild American manufacturing, while Democrats insist the president's proposals are an attempt to crash the economy, and that their party should tout its opposition to all tariffs.
But neither the policy nor politics of this moment are that neat and simple. While too few or too many tariffs can destroy economies, there is a Goldilocks zone that's just right. It's just being omitted from the conversation.
Policy-wise, Trump's tariff-all-imports initiative lands on the 'too many' side, ignoring some basic economic realities. In offering almost no implementation period, it provides industry no grace period to actually re-shore factories and other capital-intensive operations to produce goods in the US. In applying tariffs across the board rather than in a targeted fashion, Trump's proposal makes few accommodations for commodities – from coffee and vanilla to various rare earth minerals that America cannot produce at scale within its own borders.
Trump's approach is more a power grab than a trade policy – one forcing his erratic decisions on America without the consent of Congress. The strategy allows him to reprise his practice of preserving levies that hit political opponents while granting lucrative exemptions to reward big donors and powerful industries. The likely result: unnecessarily higher prices, industry-crippling retaliation, an uncertain policy environment that paralyzes investment, ever-more rampant corruption and few enduring benefits for the domestic macroeconomy.
That said, liberals' suggestion that Trump's behavior proves all tariffs are bad and the existing tariff-free trade policy is ideal – well, lived reality belies those arguments, too.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) and the reduction of tariffs on China during the 1990s and 2000s removed a financial disincentive for companies to cut costs and boost their profits by shifting production to countries that allow workers to be exploited and the environment to be despoiled. Unsurprisingly, since the trade deals passed, the United States has lost more than 70,000 manufacturing facilities and millions of factory jobs – an economic apocalypse that coincided with an unprecedented increase in suicides, drug overdoses and other 'deaths of despair.'
For much of the working class, wage and job losses were not offset by the financial benefits of cheaper imported goods. While wealthy 'Davos Men' of the 1990s and 2000s touted the 'creative destruction' of tariff-free international commerce, legions of displaced American workers weren't afforded the robust support system (healthcare, retraining, pensions, etc) other trade-exposed countries provide. Here in the US, resources were instead spent on wars, bank bailouts and tax cuts for the rich.
Meanwhile, as pandemic shortages most recently illustrated, America's anti-tariff frenzy diminished our capacity to make necessities we shouldn't depend on other countries for.
Scoffing at such concerns, Hawaii's Democratic senator Brian Schatz recently insisted: 'It should not be a goal of our national economic policymakers that we make our own socks.' His since-deleted tweet was a glib, anti-Trump broadside against tariffs only a few years after Schatz touted his own party's use of tariffs to re-shore American jobs. Similarly, some liberal pundits have mocked the idea that America should even try to rebuild some of its manufacturing capacity.
These glib brush-offs distract from security, sovereignty and self-sufficiency problems that come with the United States now relying on other nations for everything from medical supplies and medicine to military and energy equipment to the computer chips that power the economy.
Bubbling beneath liberals' free-trade dogma is the snobby insinuation that nobody in America actually wants to work in factories – a notion egged on by Chinese AI videos. But polling cited by media, libertarians and Democratic TV influencers as alleged proof of this hypothesis actually illustrates the opposite: not only do the vast majority of Americans believe it is important for the country to rebuild its manufacturing capacity, a whopping one-fourth of the country's workers believe they would be better off if they were able to change jobs to go work in manufacturing.
Republicans looking to own the libs and Democrats aiming to demonize Trump may be at one another's throats on cable TV and social media, but they are also united in one cause: in this era that rewards partisan polarization, they are both incentivized to pretend there's no middle ground between Maga's blanket tariffs that threaten an immediate national recession and liberals' free trade fundamentalism that caused permanent Depression-like conditions in the heartland.
Left unsaid in all of the political noise is the Goldilocks zone when it comes to trade: targeted tariffs in conjunction with other investment policies can create a more comprehensive industrial policy – which absolutely can create conditions to begin rebuilding American industry and boost manufacturing employment.
That's not a theory. It's exactly what started happening just before Trump's second term.
Once a doctrinaire free trader, Joe Biden as president championed a mix of carefully calibrated tax incentives, spending programs, and – yes – tariffs. He and his administration did a terrible job of publicizing the policy's triumph – but it was working. During Biden's term, the United States added more than 700,000 manufacturing jobs, far outpacing Trump's first term. Many of the jobs and factory investments occurred in Republican-dominated states that had been hammered by past free trade policies.
'Democrats should embrace tariffs as one component of a broader industrial strategy to revitalize American manufacturing and make whole communities that have been hollowed out by decades of bad trade policy,' the Pennsylvania representative Chris Deluzio recently wrote in an op-ed.
Deluzio, who represents the kind of swing district Democrats often lose, added on X: 'President Trump's tariff approach has been chaotic and inconsistent … But the answer isn't to condemn all tariffs. That risks putting the Democrats even further out of touch with the hard-working people who used to be the lifeblood of the party. If you oppose all tariffs, you're signaling that you're comfortable with exploited foreign workers making your stuff at the expense of American workers. I'm not, and neither are most voters.'
Despite echoing what had been the core economic doctrines of the most recent Democratic White House, Deluzio was promptly dogpiled by liberals and so-called Never Trump Republicans – some of whom called for him to be primaried and thrown out of Congress.
Those criticizing Deluzio, Michigan's Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer, and other Democrats staking out a middle-ground position on tariffs see this as a with-us-or-against-us political litmus test. But populist Democrats, rather than their free trade absolutist critics, are not only right on the policy merits, but also more in touch with the nuanced politics of the issue.
When trade policy became a high-profile national issue in the 1990s, the Democratic president Bill Clinton broke with unions and pushed Nafta, which delivered Democrats a jackpot of campaign cash from business donors. But the move so alienated working-class voters that some of the most consistently Democratic congressional districts quickly became the most reliably Republican in the country, according to a recent study by Princeton, Stanford and Yale researchers.
Three decades later, as trade once again takes center stage, polls suggest a similar dynamic at play. Survey data shows a majority of Americans are dissatisfied with how Trump is using tariffs and how he is managing the economy – and Democrats are smart to home in on that line of criticism.
But data also show that for the first time in generations, Republicans have equaled Democrats when voters are asked which party 'cares more about the needs and problems of people like you'.
The takeaway: voters perceive Trump's tariff gambit as a policy initiative but also as a values statement. They rightly oppose Trump's specific form of tariffs, but they also seem to see the debate as a deeper 'which side are you on' litmus test. However dishonest and fraudulent Trump's particular tariff sales pitch is, his advocacy for an entirely different trade paradigm is designed to signal to America's working class that – unlike past presidents – he hears their long-ignored grievances since Nafta began laying waste to their communities.
Put another way: Trump's trade war is part of his larger culture war.
In a recent Lever Time interview, the United Automobile Workers president, Shawn Fain, summed up the discordant political moment. His union endorsed former vice-president Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, and Fain has critiqued both Trump's across-the-board tariffs and his labor policies. But Fain has also endorsed Trump's targeted auto industry tariffs and credited the president with centering trade policy as a priority, suggesting that was one reason nearly half of his union's members voted for Trump in the last election.
'In my first 28 years as a UAW member working at Chrysler, all I saw was plants close year after year, and I feel a rage,' said Fain, who donned a 'Ross Perot Was Right' T-shirt during the interview. 'And so when you see a person like Donald Trump come along and start talking about tariffs and trade and people still are threatening their plants being closed, that spoke to people.'
A generation ago, Democrats seemed to appreciate the reality described by Fain – and they seemed to understand the error of their free-trade ways.
'We can't keep playing the same Washington game with the same Washington players and expect a different result – because it's a game that ordinary Americans are losing,' said Barack Obama in his 2008 presidential campaign. 'It's a game where trade deals like Nafta ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers to work for minimum wage at Walmart. That's what happens when the American worker doesn't have a voice at the negotiating table, when leaders change their positions on trade with the politics of the moment, and that's why we need a president who will listen to Main Street – not just Wall Street; a president who will stand with workers not just when it's easy, but when it's hard.'
Obama's populism delivered Democrats a huge electoral victory that year, including in major industrial swing states. But as president, he quickly betrayed his promises to create fairer trade policies, instead championing more Nafta-style trade deals – thus giving Trump a political weapon to bludgeon Democrats with and win his first presidential term.
Nearly a decade later, Trump no doubt hopes his tariffs will recreate his 2016 magic, goading his opponents into defending the trade status quo while he bills himself as a populist.
Democrats don't have to take the bait – they can and should hammer his economic record and his particular use of tariffs, but they also must finally break with the free-trade orthodoxy that has electorally devastated their party and economically destroyed so much of America.
David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist and an award-winning investigative journalist. He is an editor at large at Jacobin, and the founder of the Lever. He served as Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign speechwriter.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Reuters
11 minutes ago
- Reuters
Los Angeles, progressive beacon at center of anti-Trump backlash
LOS ANGELES, June 10 (Reuters) - Protests in Los Angeles against raids on suspected undocumented immigrants have turned into the strongest domestic backlash against President Donald Trump since he took office in January. Here is how the Democratic-leaning city and state of California vary from Trump's Republicans and his support in the U.S. heartland. Nationwide, Trump won around 2.5 million more votes than his Democratic rival Kamala Harris in the November presidential election but in Los Angeles, Harris won by a margin of roughly two to one. Of the 50 U.S. states, California backed Harris by the fifth largest margin. California is also home to several top-level Democrats, including Harris herself, and long-time former Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. Governor Gavin Newsom is a Democrat, as is the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass. Both have complained about Trump's tactics this week. The party raises millions in the state from wealthy donors and grassroots supporters, sometimes in a single day. At 27.3%, California has the highest foreign-born population of any U.S. state, compared to 13.9% of the total U.S. population, according to a 2024 Census report. Nearly half of Angelenos are Hispanic or Latino and some 35% of the city's total population is foreign-born, according to the American Community Survey, with many cultural and business ties to Mexico, which is only about a two-hour drive south. Faced with persistently bad air quality, especially in cities with strong driving cultures such as Los Angeles, California has developed some of the strictest environmental regulations in the country, opposed by many Republicans. A landmark plan to end the sale of gasoline-only vehicles by 2035 in California is in the crosshairs of a battle between its Democratic leadership and the Republican-run federal government, also because many other states replicate California's first-in-the-nation action. In May, the Republican-run Senate in Washington voted to ban the plan and it is now awaiting Trump's signature. He is expected to sign it this week, according to industry officials. American movies and television are one of the most visible U.S. exports, emanating from an LA-based industry that had been hailed by liberals for boosting diversity but criticized by some conservatives for creating films that include LGBT stories. In May, Trump suggested a tariff on movies produced in foreign countries to protect a domestic industry that he said was "dying a very fast death." But when China retaliated by saying it would curb American film imports, he prompted laughter at a cabinet meeting by a response that signaled his derision for Hollywood: "I think I've heard of worse things."


NBC News
20 minutes ago
- NBC News
Gavin Newsom locks horns with Trump in a politically defining moment
Amid immigration raids, peaceful protests, attacks on law enforcement officers and the threat of his own arrest by federal agents, California Gov. Gavin Newsom is immersed in what could be the most consequential political fight of his career. The battle between the president and the governor of the nation's largest state instantly turned Newsom into the face of resistance to President Donald Trump's expansive interpretation of the authorities of his office and mass-deportation campaign. It comes at a time when Newsom, who is a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, has been taking heavy criticism from within his own party over his efforts — in part through his new podcast — to cast himself in the role of conciliator. 'For someone like Newsom, the balance is: Is he able to be tough enough? Will he stand up to Trump? How does he lead at this moment?' said Democratic strategist Karen Finney. 'This is unprecedented. There's not a right answer. So far, he's doing the right things, being clear, consistent, clear communication.' Newsom could try to turn the situation on Trump by pointing to government overreach, but at the same time, there is real risk of an eruption violence from rogue actors, said Matt Bennett, co-founder of Third Way, a center-left think tank. 'The images of the militarization of this for no reason should be enough for Newsom to win this debate as long as they can keep control of the worst of the violence," he said. 'Trump always goes too far,' Bennett added. 'Last time, he went too far with the Muslim ban. Then he really went too far with child separation — those images really hurt Trump. Here, it's a real question. It's a much closer call this time. We just don't know yet.' As it is, Newsom must balance forces that are both inside and outside of his control. That includes competing with messaging from Trump (who frequently refers to the governor as "Newscum") and the president's top lieutenants, who are ever-present on cable news, social media and political podcasts. And it involves attempting to quell violent actors while pointing to Trump's actions — which have included deploying the U.S. Marines — as an overreach. For its part, the White House maintains it is winning the public relations battle, with officials tapping a refrain this week that it was the fight they wanted replete with made-for-TV images. That included images of billowing black smoke and Waymo vehicles that protesters had set on fire. On Monday, California filed suit against Trump for using emergency powers to deploy National Guard troops to the Los Angeles area over the weekend. Trump, citing a statute that allows the president to activate the guard to repel a foreign invasion or quell a rebellion, accused Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass of failing to protect federal agents and property from demonstrators. Newsom has slammed the step as escalatory, and said existing law enforcement could have handled any violence or destruction. He argued that the move was 'purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions' and that there was 'currently no unmet need.' Newsom has also been mounting his own messaging offensive, including on X, where he posted what appeared to be photos of troops crowded on a floor, apparently attempting to rest. "You sent your troops here without fuel, food, water or a place to sleep. Here they are — being forced to sleep on the floor, piled on top of one another. If anyone is treating our troops disrespectfully, it is you @realDonaldTrump," Newsom said on X. On Sunday, Newsom chided Trump border czar Tom Homan, saying in an MSNBC interview: " Tom, arrest me. Let's go." Late Monday, Newsom sat for a "Pod Save America" podcast recording in which he cast Trump's actions as unconstitutional and noted some of those assigned to Los Angeles — in his view, unnecessarily — were pried away from fentanyl investigations, and potentially from border operations, for "this theatrical display of toughness by a president of the United States who is unhinged." By Tuesday morning, Newsom accused Trump and his top White House deportation architect Stephen Miller of sheltering insurrectionists. "The only people defending insurrectionists are you and @realDonaldTrump. Or, are we pretending like you didn't pardon 1500 of them?" On Tuesday afternoon, the two were locked in another public squabble after Trump told reporters he delivered some tough words to Newsom in a phone call Monday. Newsom said the two hadn't spoken since Friday, then posted an interview with NBC News from over the weekend in which Newsom contended he and Trump had a pleasant conversation and that the president barely talked about the issue at hand. The White House had a different take. 'The President called Gavin Newsom to tell him to get his ass in gear," White House spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement. "The only liar here is Newsom who continues to fail his state as he prioritizes doing interviews with leftist media to gaslight the public instead of helping his state.' At that, Newsom responded on X: "Donald Trump is a stone cold liar." Since November's presidential election, Newsom seemed content to lay low and get a better measure of Trump's political appeal as he contemplated a run for the Oval Office. He's also taken some heat from his own party for hosting MAGA figures on his podcast and saying he opposes allowing trans athletes on girls' teams in college and youth sports. Trump's move on the protests, however, has forced Newsom to pick sides on an issue that the president and White House officials believe they have the political edge. Now, Democratic leaders say their party is galvanizing behind Newsom — at least for the moment — and it would be difficult for prospective rivals to do anything but fall in line behind him when he is taking a stand on turf that is popular with Democratic voters. Friends of Newsom say it would be an unexpected political boon for the governor if Trump and Homan follow through on their threat to arrest him if they decide he has broken the law. That would be "a Nelson Mandela moment" for Newsom, said one longtime ally, referring to the imprisonment of the anti-apartheid leader and recalling that indictments helped Trump win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. At the same time, that ally and others are careful to depict the governor as focused on the substance of the battle with Trump, rather than the political risks or rewards. "He's not going to stand by idly while President Trump aims to destroy California," said California state Rep. Buffy Wicks, a Democrat who often aligns with Newsom. "I do not think it's a political calculation. It's genuinely how he feels, and he's leading with his heart on it." Another observer had a different take: 'This whole fiasco could make Gavin president,' Anthony Scaramucci, the short-lived White House communications director in Trump's first term, wrote on X Monday. The obvious pitfall for Newsom is that Trump could take credit for restoring order or, if violence escalates, continue to pour blame on him. Democrats in the state say that they believe Trump is intentionally sowing discord and that Newsom's best political move is to do his job well. "The most important thing he can do is show he can manage a crisis," said Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif. "Good governance is always the best politics — to just show competence contrasting with Trump's chaos." Trump has deployed 700 Marines to Los Angeles to support the roughly 300 National Guard members already on the ground. The president had already ordered the deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops. It remains to be seen how the courts will come down on California's lawsuit. The relevant law allows the president to activate the National Guard domestically in order to quell a foreign invasion or a rebellion against the U.S. government, and Trump, calling protesters "insurrectionists," declared the demonstrations a "rebellion." The California attorney general argues in the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Northern California, that Trump has illegally usurped the authority of the state by fabricating a rebellion and that the presence of guard forces is exacerbating tension between protesters and law enforcement officers. The powers to deploy the National Guard are divided between presidents and governors, with state executives generally controlling when they are activated within their own state — as opposed to being deployed to foreign wars. Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, said in an interview with NBC News that governors routinely work with the White House, regardless of party, to mobilize National Guard forces for a variety of tasks, including the response to natural disasters. At times, governors have asked presidents to deploy guard forces to restore order in their states during riots. But not since the Civil Rights era has a president called up the National guard to enforce the law over the objection of the state's governor. Democrats say that it's up to state and local law enforcement to keep the peace and that there was no need for Trump to federalize troops — especially without the consent of the governor. "Gavin's mad as hell and he should be," McAuliffe said. "This is the governor's responsibility, not the president's." Bennett flagged concerns about introducing the U.S. Marines into the situation, saying they are not trained in controlling crowds of Americans. 'This is a very, very dangerous thing," Bennett said. "God forbid, if they hurt somebody … that's real trouble for Trump. But [we're] not rooting for that.'


NBC News
33 minutes ago
- NBC News
Trump warns that military parade protesters will face 'very heavy force'
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump warned Tuesday that anyone who protests at the U.S. military parade here on Saturday will be met with "very heavy force." Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that they're going to be "celebrating big on Saturday," referring to the parade that will wind its way through downtown Washington, D.C. "If there's any protester that wants to come out, they will be met with very big force," Trump said. "I haven't even heard about a protest, but you know, this is people that hate our country, but they will be met with very heavy force." The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. The president also addressed the protests of the administration's immigration raids in Los Angeles."These are paid insurrectionists," he said about the demonstrators. The military parade Saturday will mark the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army and is expected to feature tanks and hundreds of other military vehicles and aircraft. It's estimated to cost about $45 million, including as much as $16 million to repair D.C. streets afterward, U.S. military officials said last month. Saturday is also Trump's 79th birthday. "We're going to have a fantastic June 14 parade, Flag Day. It's going to be an amazing day. We have tanks, we have planes, we have all sorts of things. And I think it's going to be great. We're going to celebrate our country for a change," Trump said Tuesday. Trump said that other countries celebrate the end of World War II and that the U.S. was the only country that did not. "And we're the one that won the war," said Trump, who added that if it weren't for the U.S., Americans would be speaking German or Japanese. "We won the war, and we're the only country that didn't celebrate it, and we're going to be celebrating big on Saturday," he said. Officials are expecting hundreds of thousands of attendees, Matt McCool, the U.S. Secret Service agent in charge of the Washington field office, said Monday. McCool said they plan to deploy "thousands of agents, officers and specialists from across the country." People attending the parade or a related festival will be required to go through checkpoints with magnetometers. Asked about any changes to security planning in light of the L.A. protests, McCool said, "We plan for those things ahead of time' 'We were paying attention, obviously, to what is happening there, and we'll be ready for that if it were to occur here,' he said, though he added, 'We have no intelligence of that happening here, but if it does, we have the resources to handle it." U.S. Park Police had several protest permits pending on Monday, but officials 'don't have any significant concerns," said McCool, who added that they're tracking 'about nine First Amendment activity demonstrations.' The anti-Trump group No Kings is expecting more than 1,800 rallies nationwide Saturday that organizers said were planned as "a peaceful stand against authoritarian overreach and the gross abuse of power this Administration has shown." With Trump's decision to deploy the National Guard and U.S. Marines to respond to the L.A. demonstrations, the group said in a statement: "This military escalation only confirms what we've known: this government wants to rule by force, not serve the people. From major cities to small towns, we'll rise together and say: we reject political violence. We reject fear as governance. We reject the myth that only some deserve freedom."