L’État, C’est Moi (‘I Am the State’).Trumpian Version
Can we get down to the brass tacks here?
As much as the MAGA folks and friends would like to believe that Trump’s Golden Age of American Prosperity is steaming down the pike, and giving him full credit for slaying a lot of political devils like DEI, green energy, weaponizsation of the DOJ/FBI, getting boys out of the girls’ swim lanes, ending the disaster in Ukraine, standing up Elon Musk and the DOGE boys, canceling the penny and scuttling daylight savings time, too, the truth needs be told.
To wit, when it comes to economics the Donald is as far out to lunch as Sleepy Joe, Barry, Chuckles, Nancy and the Washington Dems ever were. That’s because he’s a rightwing statist who would make Louis XIV proud: L’État, c’est moi (“I am the state”).
But the thing is, the state can’t make prosperity; it can only retard, impair, enfeeble and even crush it. What makes prosperity is just what Milton Friedman said: Namely, the exertions of free men on free markets, enabled by sound money, minimalist government, constitutional liberty and the rights to property and the fruits of their own labors, talents and creations.
As far as we can tell, the Donald has precious little affinity—if any at all—for these bedrock principles of capitalist prosperity and a free society. To the contrary, his policy positions amount to a dog’s breakfast of gripes, grievances, histrionics, nativist humbug and MAGA rally pablum. And even most of that turns on a Brobdingnagian ego that filters everything as a zero sum transaction in which he is the grand deal-maker and unparalleled negotiator who alone can score the “win” and save the day for the nation.
Unfortunately, this leads Donald Trump to a frame of mind which sees America as one giant business enterprise where he has been elected CEO and deal-maker-in-chief. From that august perch, in turn, he claims carte blanche authority to deploy import tariffs taxes at will in pursuit of any and all objectives that strike his fancy.
That is, one day he might be battering $950 billion of annual goods and services trade with Canada in order to punish our neighbor to the north for what has been an average of about $400k per year of Fentanyl seized at the border. Then, the next day he monkey-hammers the EU for a 10% tariff on American-made gas guzzlers for which there is scant market in high fuel-tax Europe—even as American consumers lap up luxury BMWs’, Mercedes’ and Porsche’s not because the US tariff is too low and “stupid” at 2.5%, but because these German brands won the US market from Cadillac and Lincoln fair and square via superior engineering, styling and marketing.
Lately, he’s also been proposing to use tariffs as a foreign policy cattle prod against any country that doesn’t toe the neocon line against Iran or which does business with Venezuela. That is, if you are buying khaki pants from India, which country purchases both Iranian and Venezuelan oil, you’re gonna get the Donald’s “secondary tariff” stick on the back of the neck right soon.
In the case of Venezuela, the impending 25% Trump Tax is especially vexing because the combination of socialist stupidity there and onerous US sanctions levied by Washington have shattered its economy and sent 7 million desperate immigrants fleeing northward. Yet because among these hordes of the economically injured there have been about 135 gang members according to the FBI and ICE (0.00002%), US consumers will be paying a secondary tariff of 25% or $22 billion per year on imports from India alone beginning on April 2nd.
That’s the equivalent of a bounty of $165,000 per alleged gang member. And when you add in all the other countries which will be caught up in Trump’s latest extension of arbitrary state power—that is, secondary tariffs—you can readily see extractions of thousands of dollars per household annually in Trump Tariff/Taxes levied whenever the Donald gets a bee in his bonnet about something not going his way.
Just this weekend, for example, he got “pissed-off” about some apparent Russian conditions for a peace deal in Ukraine—so in an instant the Donald was brandishing a 25% tariffs on oil against erstwhile friend, Vlad Putin. That might amount to something if the US actually bought a single drop of oil from Russia, but we don’t because Joe Biden forbade it and the Donald has left the “Joe Biden” entity’s rules in place.
Yet, again, the tariff that he is threatening Russia with is actually a Carom shot. That is, a second step removed levy on the exports of Russia’s downstream oil and gas customers. In turn, this has your editor slightly perturbed because our next pair of Gucci loafers are going to cost 25% more owing to the fact that they are made in Italy, which buys kerosene and gasoline from Turkey, which is said to be refined from trans-shipped Russian crude oil!
In a phone interview with NBC on Sunday, President Donald Trump said, “if Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault — which it might not be — but if I think it was Russia’s fault, I am going to put secondary tariffs on oil, on all oil coming out of Russia.”
“I was very angry, pissed off” when Putin “started getting into [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky’s credibility” and “started talking about new leadership” in Ukraine, Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker in a phone call.
So, you see the tangled web here. The Donald is actually fixing to hijack what is virtually the entire commerce of planet earth to punish trade “cheaters” one moment and purported foreign policy malefactors the next. And yet and yet: Why in the world does the Donald think he owns our private business—that is, our economic doings as consumers, entrepreneurs, importers, exporters,
Article from LewRockwell
LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
