The news these days is filled with various articles warning of what a second Trump term would look like. Most of these pieces focus on his statements about exacting revenge and retribution by stacking the DOJ with Trump loyalists willing to prosecute his enemies. They talk about his potential desire to withdraw from NATO and the worldwide ramifications that would have. The Federal government under another Trump reign will likely be stacked with many people whose primary qualification is unwavering loyalty to Trump. It will be a new era in American history for sure. However, many people, including a majority of Trump supporters kind of view these things with a ‘so what, this won’t affect me attitude.’
However, there are other things Trump will likely do in a second term that will have an adverse direct impact on the same people who so fervently support him. As we all recall, in Trump’s first term he levied significant tariffs against China and other trading partners, much of this at the urging of his economic advisor, Peter Navarro. (Who happens to be on his way to jail!). Trump has said he will take similar actions in his second term because he continues to push the false narrative that they were successful and beneficial for the country.
A recent nonpartisan study shoots down that narrative. “The nonpartisan working paper examines monthly data on US employment by industry to find that the tariffs that Trump placed on foreign s, washing machines, and an array of goods from China starting in 2018 neither raised nor lowered the overall number of jobs in the affected industries.
“But the tariffs did incite other countries to impose their own retaliatory tariffs on US products, making them more expensive to sell overseas, and those levies had a negative effect on American jobs, the paper finds. That was particularly true in agriculture: Farmers who exported soybeans, cotton, sorghum to China were hit be Beijing’s decision to raise tariffs on those products to as much as percent.”1
To mitigate some of the damage being done to US farmers due to his tariffs and China’s retaliation, the US government doled out $23 billion in 2018 and 2019 to farmers. Ironically, many of these same people who support Trump rail against ‘big government’ and the country’s march toward ‘socialism’ were more than happy to take these government handouts.
Not only did Trump’s tariffs adversely impact farmers but according to a study by the Tax Foundation1, it resulted in $80 billion in new taxes on the American public by levying tariffs on products worth $380 billion during 2018 and 2019. This is equivalent to one of the largest tax increases in decades.
Like so much of what happens in Trump world, the facts and data are drowned out by repetitive false narratives. As the study reported in the Boston Globe concluded, the tariffs implemented by Trump were a policy failure but a political success. In an ideal world, one would like to think at some point more people will begin to see through the political fog generated by Trump’s false narratives but, if not, they will have no one to blame but themselves when, after they have voted for Trump, his failed policies adversely affect their lives and wallets.
