Posted on 11/07/2025 11:39:19 AM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
Trump Derangement Syndrome has progressives snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
When it comes to trade, there are two kinds of progressives: the virtue signalers who profess concern for the environment, human rights, and good jobs for American workers while quietly pushing American reliance on low-wage sweatshops and sludge-dumping factories, and the ones who support tariffs.
This used to be a fair fight within the Democratic Party. The corporate wing would head to Davos to celebrate free trade, open borders, and higher profits, dutifully buying carbon offsets for their private jets, while the labor wing would stay home and warn against undermining liberal values to save a buck on labor.
When Joe Biden became president in 2021, he kept most of Trump’s existing China tariffs in place. This was no simple act of inertia either; before abandoning his 2024 re-election bid, Biden proposed tripling duties on Chinese steel and quadrupling them for electric vehicles as a way to outflank Trump on the campaign trail.
“Because Chinese steel companies produce a lot more steel than China needs, it ends up dumping the extra steel into the global markets at unfairly low prices,” Biden told a group of union workers in swing state Pennsylvania last April.
“Chinese steel companies don’t need to worry about making a profit, because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he added. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating. And we’ve seen the damage here in America.”
No longer. Donald Trump supports tariffs, and the Republican Party is coming around, and that is apparently enough to necessitate that all progressives throw their own priorities under the bus.
There’s an anti-tariff MoveOn petition seeking 50,000 signatures listed alongside others opposing ICE agents at the Super Bowl and the addition of Trump’s face...
(Excerpt) Read more at commonplace.org ...
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
Used to be Democrats were pro-tariff and pro worker.
I’m old enough to remember when some democrats were actual patriots. I think it 1962.
Same with the GOP. If you read the 1924 GOP platform there are several huge paragraphs giving 100% support for the tariff.
The GOP used to be THE tariff party.
““In This House, We Believe” signs now include the phrase “tariffs hurt manufacturing” among a host of unrelated claims. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is on record as far back as 1996 railing against our trade deficit with China, yet she now calls tariffs “reckless” because they will “raise prices for consumers.”
________________
In all fairness, the D’s never intended to go thru with tariffs that helped the working and middle classes — they were all in on DAVOS and Aspen and having their donors make billions doing business in China.
It’s a little like John McCain promising to close the border.
Noone but the rubes believe them. The folks with the in this house signs are the rubes. They probably would have supported Pelosi and Biden’s pretend Tariffs at the time (if they even thought about it) and now they oppose DJT’s.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.