Trump's tariff fiasco is an opportunity to reboot the Libertarian Party
A corrupt Republican president abuses his executive power to restrict free markets, placing legal constraints on free trade in goods and services, and then uses the granting of specific exceptions to shake down contributions from businessmen who are hurt by the restrictions. This political extortion is seen as such an abuse of office and betrayal of conservative economics principles that members of his own party band together to oppose him.
That corrupt Republican president? Richard Milhouse Nixon.
When President Nixon imposed his wage and price controls across the country, it wasn't just economically destructive; it was also corrupt. As Ciara Torres-Spelliscy noted for the Brennan Center, by creating a blanket policy that crushed businesses, Nixon was soliciting connected business owners to petition him for exceptions in exchange for large donations to his campaign.
Nixon's wage and price controls inspired David Nolan to gather a group of free market Republicans — all disgusted with Nixon's schemes — in his Colorado living room. This is how the Libertarian Party was born.
President Donald Trump has in many ways followed Richard Nixon's economic playbook, though instead of wage and price controls, he has chosen to impose arbitrary blanket tariffs, violating free market principles (and trade deals he negotiated) by putting import taxes on everything American businesses and consumers buy from other countries. Trump has a record of targeting media companies and law firms to extract personal benefits. Imposing tariffs gives him another tool in the box. He may not have used it yet, but he's already made public statements about how countries can 'come to the table' to negotiate an exception from these punitive tariffs. Some impacted businesses are going to ask for exceptions from import taxes and may assume their chances of success are far greater if they offer something of value to Trump's interests.
Now would be a great time for the Libertarian Party, founded in opposition to Republican corruption, to oppose another president's meddling with the markets, potentially for his own gain. Alas, the current iteration of the party is far more dedicated to fighting MAGA-friendly culture war battles than standing up for free market principles.
In the wake of the 2017 Charlottesville 'Unite the Right' rally and the neo-Nazi murder of counteractivist Heather Heyer, then-Libertarian Party executive director Wes Benedict publicly rejected the hateful and bigoted views of the alt-right groups who marched to chants of 'Jews will not replace us.'
However, as a reaction to that anti-bigotry stance, a group called the Mises Caucus was formed to try to steer the Libertarian Party toward a more MAGA-friendly platform that would welcome anti-immigrant, anti-abortion and antisemitic conservatives into a historically pro-freedom party. It took five years, but by the 2022 Libertarian National Convention, the Mises Caucus was able to install an anti-vaccine activist and former paralegal, Angela McArdle, as Libertarian National Committee Chair and remove the anti-bigotry and pro-choice planks from the Libertarian platform.
With a majority of the national committee sympathetic to a far-right Republican distortion of libertarian principles, Trumpworld figures like Ric Grenell — who has served in both Trump administrations — started communicating directly with McArdle about ways that the Libertarian Party could assist Trump by delivering the Libertarian vote in what promised to be a very close election.
During the 2024 campaign, Angela McArdle seemed more interested in providing public support for fellow anti-vaccine activist Democratic (and later, independent) candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Republican candidate Donald Trump than she did for Libertarian Party nominee Chase Oliver. Both Kennedy and Trump were given prime-time speaking spots at the Libertarian National Convention in Washington, D.C., where Trump promised to pardon Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht — who was serving a life sentence in prison — if elected. McArdle used that promise as a fig leaf for her deliberate sabotage of the Libertarian Party's candidate that contributed to his disappointing fourth-place finish behind Jill Stein of the Green Party and a collapse of the Libertarian Party's finances. (Trump made good on that promise, pardoning Ulbricht a day after taking office.)
Facing multiple lawsuits and allegations of embezzlement by a former Libertarian Party gubernatorial candidate, Angela McArdle resigned as LNC Chair in January 2025, replaced by Florida business owner Stephen Nekhaila, who defeated a Mises Caucus candidate for the job. (In response to questions about the accusations, McArdle told the libertarian-leaning Reason magazine that she was the victim of 'aggressive cyberstalking' by her accusers, and added, 'I will be working with new appointees in the Trump administration to find out if the FBI and State Dept have been involved in the attacks on the LP and me.')
This rejection of the far-right elements in the Libertarian Party, combined with the urgency of President Trump's tariff schemes, has created an opportunity for Americans —particularly those leaning Republican — who support free people and free markets to rejoin the Libertarian Party and join the opposition to the Trump administration.
Tariffs are taxes Americans pay. The libertarian position is that we should be fighting for zero tariffs, and we certainly shouldn't let a president unilaterally usurp the constitutional authority of Congress to impose taxes.
Republicans, particularly Trump's senior trade adviser Peter Navarro, over the past several months have engaged in charm offensive on tariffs, trying to persuade the Libertarian voter that they should adopt the Republican position on the issue instead of the party's formative view that tariffs harm the United States of America. Navarro has claimed to have proprietary data demonstrating the positive nature of, and even necessity of tariffs. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, however, exposed this charm offensive as being built on a house of cards, as supported by at least one fictional expert, 'Ron Vara,' that Navarro made up out of whole cloth.
There is no legitimate reason for Libertarians in the Trump administration's orbit to be supporting these tariffs. Thankfully, Stephen Nekhaila, the new Chair of the Libertarian Party, has recommitted the party to the fight against Trump's tariffs.
America needs a vocal Libertarian Party to stand up against a corrupt Republican president even more now than it did in 1971. It's time for individual libertarians to break with the Republican Party as they did 50 years ago and express our shared condemnation of tariffs and price controls, in our voter registrations where possible, in the voting booth, and even, if possible, at protests with like-minded individuals.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
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