We don’t know if the tariffs will work, but we know something must be done. We don’t have free trade. Anyone who wants free trade will get it, but that isn’t what is happening.
Victor Davis Hanson makes a brilliant case for the tariffs. There is a transcript after the clip.
.@VDHanson makes a compelling case for the @realDonaldTrump tariff strategy, but gets one issue incorrect. He describes the Trump tariffs as reciprocal and proportional to those other nations have assessed on us.
In actuality, the Trump tariffs were set at levels substantiallyโฆ https://t.co/WdKggDlVbD
โ Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) April 5, 2025
TRANSCRIPT
โApril 3, Donald Trump announced it as Liberation Day. By that, he meant we were going to be liberated from the asymmetrical tariffs of the last 50 years. And it was going to inaugurate a new, what he called Golden Age of trade parody, greater investment in the United States, but mostly greater job opportunities and higher paying jobs for Americans. And yet the world seemed to erupt in anger.
“It was very strange; even people on the libertarian right and, of course, the left were very angry. The Wall Street Journal pilloried Donald Trump, but here’s my question: China has prohibitive tariffs. So does Vietnam, so does Mexico, so does Europe, so do a lot of countries. So does India, but if tariffs are so destructive of their economies.
โWhy is China booming? How did India become an economic powerhouse when it has these exorbitant tariffs on American imports? How did Vietnam, of all places, become such a different country even though it has these prohibitive tariffs? Why isn’t Germany before its energy problems?… It’s got tariffs on almost everything that we send them. How is the EU even functioning with these tariffs? I thought tariffs destroyed an economy, but they seem to like them, and they’re angry that they’re no longer asymmetrical.
โApparently, our people who are tariffing us think tariffs improve their economy? Maybe they’re right. I don’t know. The second thing is, why would you get angry at the person who is reacting to the asymmetrical tariff and not the people who inaugurated the tariff? Why is Canada mad at us when it’s running a $63 billion surplus, and it has tariffs on some American products at 250%?
โDoesn’t it seem like the people who started this asymmetrical, if I could use the word trade war, should be the culpable people, not the people who are reluctantly reacting to it, sort of like Ukraine and Russia. Russia invaded Ukraine. Do we blame Ukraine for defending itself and trying to reciprocate? No, we don’t. We don’t blame America because it finally woke up and said, Whatever, they tariff us, we’re going to tariff them.
โWhich brings up another question, are they? Are our tariffs? Really? Tariffs, that is. Were they preemptive; were they leveled against countries that had no tariffs against us; were they punitive? No. They’re almost leveled on autopilot; whatever a particular country tariffs us, we reciprocate and just merely image them, and they go off anytime that country says, you know, it was a mistake. We’re sorry. You’re an ally; you’re a neutral. We’re not going to tear off this American product. And we say, Fine.
โThen the autopilot ceases, and the automatic tariff ends. It’s, in other words, it’s their choice, not ours. We’re just reacting to what they did, not what we did.
โA couple of other questions that I’ve had: we haven’t run a trade surplus since 1975, 50 years. So it wasn’t suddenly we woke up and said, It’s unfair. We want commercial justice. No, we’ve been watching this happen for 50 years. It’s been going on and no president, no administration, no Congress in the past has done anything about it.
โDone anything about what? levying tariffs on our products that we don’t level on theirs. It was all predicated in the post-war period. We were so affluent, so powerful, Europe, China, Russia, was in shambles that we had to take up the burdens of reviving the economy by taking great trade deficits. Fifty years later, we have been de-industrialized, and the countries who did this to us by these unfair and asymmetrical tariffs did not fall apart. They did not self destruct.
โThey apparently thought it was in their self-interest. If anybody calibrates the recent GDP growth of India or Taiwan or South Korea or Japan, they seem to have some logic to it.
โThere’s a final irony. The people who are warning us most vehemently about this tariff quote the Smoot Hawley Act of 1930. But remember something that came after the onset of the Depression, after. The stock market crashed in 1929. That law was not passed in 1930. It was not really implemented to 31 and here’s the other thing that they were conveniently not reminded of.
โWe were running a surplus that was a preemptive punitive tariff on our part against other countries. We had a trade surplus, and it was not 10 or 20%. Some of the tariffs were 40 and 50%, and again, it happened after the collapse of the stock market.
โIn conclusion, don’t you find it very ironic that Wall Street is blaming the Trump tariffs for heading us into a recession, if not depression, when the only Great Depression we’ve ever had was not caused by tariffs, but by Wall Street.โ
There is good news
Let’s not forget the goal: bringing manufacturing and jobs back to the USA. We don’t want to be dependent on other countries, especially enemies. President Trump has some very good things going in the economy. For the third straight month, jobs have been created. Last month, it was 228,000. Biden decimated manufacturing. In the last two months of his term, manufacturing lost 10,000 jobs in December and 5,000 in January. President Trump gained 9,000 jobs in manufacturing in February and March.
Reality:
We can’t have half the nation struggling.
A most articulate perspective on Trump’s tariff strategy and stock market turbulence.
Stop whining about the market. pic.twitter.com/ItLaGHbAtH
โ John LeFevre (@JohnLeFevre) April 4, 2025
And trillions are coming back with the return of some companies. The tariffs will require people to be patient.
The @VP isnโt just repeating talking points. He lived it. For a time, I grew up in a town fifty miles from his. Blighted is a kind way to describe the decay and death around us.
If you think MAGA isnโt dead serious about these tariffs, you havenโt been paying attention at all. https://t.co/mlWLj7D6iV
โ Michael R. Caputo (@MichaelRCaputo) April 5, 2025
Check the Tariffs Yourself:
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