Not All Tariffs Are Bad

Apr 15 2025 The Guardian

A good piece about the middle ground, which is totally lost in this polarised and partisan “you are either with us or against us” political environment.

Trump’s tariffs are reckless – but they hold a key lesson for Democrats

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.

In addition to the quote above the piece has one important and often overlooked insight:

Trump’s trade war is part of his larger culture war.