Trump Comes to Bury Tariffs, Not Praise Them

Andrew Cullen

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L-a-a-a-a-dies and gentlemen, your attention please. I am about to attempt a death-defying stunt THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER ATTEMPTED BEFORE. I am going to defend Donald Trump’s tariff policy.

Are you ready? (Cracks knuckles.) As you know, tariffs are bad. All the finest economists say so. BUT. There’s one generally tolerated exception to this rule: If another country has indefensibly high tariffs, and the sole purpose of your tariff is to cause them enough pain to force them to reduce their tariffs, then it’s OK. If you’re successful, then everyone’s tariffs go down and the world is better off.

But this can take a while, and in the meantime your own people can suffer. So today President Trump announced a plan to help our farmers who are hurt by the tariffs we imposed on China. The general reaction to this was mockery:

But if the purpose of the tariffs is to force China to reduce its tariffs; and if we know this will take a while; and if we know that domestic resistance to sustained economic pain is our biggest obstacle to seeing this through—then it makes sense to stand tough on the tariffs but assuage domestic resistance with random payouts here and there. And that’s what Trump is doing.

If you think the tariff war is dumb in the first place, then the payoff to farmers is dumb on top of dumb. But if you support the tariff war as a way of getting China to open its economy more, than the payoff to American farmers makes perfect sense. It’s just a way of bribing people to allow a good but painful policy to run its course.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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