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Victor Davis Hanson: Are Trump’s Tariffs Really Tariffs?
American Greatness ^ | 6 Feb, 2025 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 02/06/2025 4:30:53 AM PST by MtnClimber

Trump’s tariffs aim to curb unfair trade, illegal immigration, and fentanyl smuggling while forcing allies and rivals to stop exploiting U.S. generosity.

Hysteria has erupted here and abroad over President Trump’s threats to level trade tariffs against particular countries.

Both American and foreign critics blasted them variously as either counterproductive and suicidal or unfair, imperialistic, and xenophobic.

Certainly, tariffs are widely hated by doctrinaire economists. They complain that tariffs burden consumers with higher prices to protect weak domestic industries that, shielded from competition, will have no incentive to improve efficiency.

Their ideal is “free” trade. Supposedly a free global market alone should adjudicate which particular industry in any country can produce the greatest good for the world’s consumers, whether defined by lower prices or better quality, or both.

Even when “free trade” becomes “unfair trade”—such as China’s massive mercantile surpluses—many neoliberal economists still insist that even subsidized foreign imports are beneficial.

Cheap imports, Americans were told, supposedly still lowered prices for consumers, still forced domestic producers to economize to remain competitive, and still brought “creative destruction,” as inefficient domestic industries properly gave way to more efficient, market-driven ones.

But many exporters to the U.S. are propped up by their own governments.

They may seem more competitive only because their governments want to dump products at a loss to capture market share, subsidize their businesses’ overhead to protect domestic employment or seek to create a monopoly over a strategic industry.

Yet when Trump threatened to level tariffs against Mexico, Canada, Colombia, Venezuela, China, or the European Union, they were not primarily aimed at propping up particular inefficient U.S. industries at all.

Instead, an exasperated Trump threatened Mexico with tariffs for three reasons.

It refused to address its cartels’ illegal multibillion-dollar export of lethal fentanyl into the United States.

(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Editorial; Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS: vdh; victordavishanson

1 posted on 02/06/2025 4:30:53 AM PST by MtnClimber
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To: MtnClimber

How else do you deal with a corrupt, narco-terror, human trafficking state short of war?


2 posted on 02/06/2025 4:31:03 AM PST by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: texas booster

VDH ping


3 posted on 02/06/2025 4:31:38 AM PST by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: MtnClimber

That website of his is impossible.


4 posted on 02/06/2025 4:34:55 AM PST by HIDEK6 (God bless Donald Trump)
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To: HIDEK6

In what way?

I use it all the time


5 posted on 02/06/2025 4:45:41 AM PST by Chickensoup
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To: 5th MEB; 6ppc; agondonter; Alberta's Child; AndyJackson; Aria; artichokegrower; ...
Ping! Out to the Victor Davis Hanson list

So, Trump is not a mercantilist.

Instead, he is trying to stop the multimillion-person influx of foreign criminals, the crashing of the border by millions of illegal aliens, the cartels’ export of American-killing drugs, the violation of past trade agreements, and allies from using America to subsidize their own defense.

The Trump tariffs are the last, desperate effort to reestablish global reciprocity and keep America safe.

Prof Hanson discusses the Trump tariffs as a way to negotiate ... and to change behavior.

FR Index of his articles: Victor Davis Hanson on FR

Town Hall: Victor Davis Hanson on Town Hall

American Greatness: Victor Davis Hanson on American Greatness

His website: Victor Davis Hanson

Please let me know if you want on or off this new VDH ping list.

As a reminder, Professor Hanson has asked that we do not post the full article of his writings. Thank you for following the link to finish his article.

Content created by the Center for American Greatness, Inc. is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a significant audience.

https://freerepublic.com/tag/victordavishanson/index

6 posted on 02/06/2025 4:47:09 AM PST by texas booster (Join FreeRepublic's Folding@Home team (Team # 36120) Cure Alzheimer's!)
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To: All

The Trump tariffs are an effort to reestablish global reciprocity and keep America safe:
<><>he is trying to stop the multimillion-person influx of foreign criminals,
<><>the crashing of the border by millions of illegal aliens,
<><>the cartels’ export of American-killing drugs,
<><>the violation of past trade agreements,
<><>and allies using America to subsidize their own defense.


7 posted on 02/06/2025 4:58:58 AM PST by Liz
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To: MtnClimber

The only thing I would add is that they want to destroy this nation as well, and Trump is stopping that also. But a great piece, thanks for sharing. 🙂👍


8 posted on 02/06/2025 5:22:20 AM PST by Robert DeLong
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To: MtnClimber

When the U.S. Congress sold out to the globalists and opened the U.S. market, the industry I worked in was one of the first targeted by the Chinese. The Chinese government gave a 25% rebate to the Chinese factories for all goods shipped to the U.S. In addition the Chinese exporting factories could borrow money for expanding capacity at 0% interest for 20 years. The factory workers were paid $1 per day for a 10 hour shift and worked 6 days per week. No overtime paid. No benefits. Workers, who were peasants brought in from rural areas and often underage, lived in dormitories outside the factories, 8 per room. While my company’s U.S. factories operated under strict EPA regulations requiring effluent to be cleaner than the water in the river we were drawing water from , in China effluent was dumped directly into the river with no treatment.

The media, academics, and US politicians proclaimed US industry would have to get competitive. With the U.S. government’s ever tightening regulations, the high cost of capital for modernizing U.S. factories, the huge labor cost differential, and the production subsidies for Chinese factories, the only course of action was to shut down the U.S. factories and move the production offshore.

Did the company pass lower production costs to US consumers? No. That cost savings funded higher executive salaries and stock buybacks that enriched Wall Street investment firms and company executives with large stock option grants. Likely some of that money flowed through to the politicians of both parties passing the open markets trade agreements. U.S customers got no benefit. US employees and towns where the closed factories were located paid the price of the destruction of American manufacturing. China went from an impoverished third world country to an economic and military power.

Do tariffs work? Ask the U.S. workers whose jobs went away when the U.S. government dropped tariffs and quotas in the 1990’s to embrace free trade. Ask the U.S. taxpayers whose taxes were raised to offset the lost tariff revenue and lost income tax revenue from the no longer employed workers. Ask the small business people in the towns where factories were shut down. Finally, ask the rulers of China who have won a 30 year economic war with the U.S.


9 posted on 02/06/2025 7:48:11 AM PST by Soul of the South (The past is gone and cannot be changed. Tomorrow can be a better day if we work on it.)
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