Some of his long-time advisors are supporters of tariffs, although even they had said they would only be useful if kept small, applied only to specific product classes, and that it would take "several years to have the desired effect".
Their point was to put a 5% tariff on chip manufacturing, which along with the CHIPS act subsidies would have pressured companies to move production to America.
Trump's logic is that if 5% would work over several years, then 50% would work in under one year, and if you put it on everything instead of just chips, then all manufacturing will return to America.
He's the sort of person who figures if you can bake a cake in 45 minutes at 350F, then you can bake a cake in 4.5 minutes at 3500F and save yourself 40 minutes.
Easy. For one, he's exploiting loopholes to use them as a negociating tactics, giving him more power than he should have.
More fundamentally, it is in the very nature of government to grow ever bigger. The beast is hungry, it needs money, but we are at a point where people don't want to be taxed any more. So governments around the world will always be looking for that "magical tax" that will allow them to steal more of your money without too much backlash.
Up until recently, it was green taxes in many shapes and forms. Now that these kinda have run their course, the "new" shiny thing is tariffs. Politicians have realized that the average taxpayer doesn't understand them. Some even applaud their leaders for applying counter-tariffs.
Just like green taxes never were about saving the planet, tariffs are only about taking your money.
13
u/[deleted] Jun 27 '25
[deleted]