Krugman vs. Trump on tariffs

President Trump imposed tariffs on nations that take advantage of our free trade policy. The cheaters include nations that we protect with our military at our expense. Our NATO allies roll us like we are the town drunk. Japan, South Korea and Israel are three more ingrates. They welcome our aid but not our products.

FDR called America the arsenal of democracy in World War II as we supplied our allies—including the USSR—with war materiel.

That won’t happen again. Our government’s refusal to protect American manufacturers from unfair competition created a rust belt that destroyed city after city and state after state.

Our factories are almost gone because of foreign exploitation of our post-war generosity. We bought the cheap made-in-Japan crap only to see us face tariffs and other economic barriers add 46% to the price of American goods sold there.

In retaliation, Trump is slapping a 24% tariff on Japanese products. It gets complicated because Toyota and Honda make some cars here.

Will Trump’s plans work?

Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote, “Trump Goes Crazy on Trade.”

He wrote, “Just a quick update after Trump’s Rose Garden speech.

“I guess it’s just possible that when we get details about the Trump tariffs they will be lower than what he just announced, but based on what he said, he’s gone full-on crazy. It’s not just that he appears to be imposing much higher tariffs than almost anyone expected. He’s also making false claims about our trading partners—not sure in this case whether they’re lies, because he may be truly ignorant—that will both enrage them and make it very hard to back down.”

Ah, “he’s gone full-on crazy”—just like Lincoln, Grant, Hayes, Garfield and every other Republican president not named Bush.

Democrat presidents from Jackson to Biden have opposed tariffs, beginning with South Carolina nullifying a tariff on the cotton picked by the slaves Democrats owned.

Krugman is the Jim Cramer of newspaper economists, meaning he’s always wrong.

Who can forget his Election Night 2016 prediction?

The Weird Beard wrote, “It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover?

“Frankly, I find it hard to care much, even though this is my specialty. The disaster for America and the world has so many aspects that the economic ramifications are way down my list of things to fear.

“Still, I guess people want an answer: If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.”

Death to America, Ayatollah Krugman said.

He ended his short piece, “we are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight. I suppose we could get lucky somehow. But on economics, as on everything else, a terrible thing has just happened.”

The terrible thing turned out to be peace and prosperity.

Max Zahn reported, “Mexico and Canada—two of the U.S.'s biggest trading partners—are not affected by the reciprocal tariffs. Goods that fall under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada free-trade agreement will continue to not see tariffs, while non-USMCA goods are already under a 25% tariff, announced by Trump last month.”

Democrats are using a few bad Republican senators to stop Trump’s tariffs on Canada. I doubt Speaker Mike Johnson will allow it to go to a vote, which will lead to a nasty little battle.

Maybe Chatty Cory, the senator from New Jersey, can come into the House and bore everyone into leaving with another 24-hour speech. Insurrections get you arrested. Being as interesting as a blank blackboard doesn’t. Know the difference.

Trump will veto it and it will die, but newspaper headlines will be made.

In announcing his tariffs, Trump said, “From 1789 to 1913, we were a tariff-backed nation and the United States was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been.

“In 1913, for reasons unknown to mankind, they established the income tax so that citizens, rather than foreign countries, would start paying the money necessary to run our government. Then in 1929, it all came to a very abrupt end with a Great Depression, and it would have never happened if they had stayed with the tariff policy.”

Oh, we imposed income taxes to replace the tax on booze and clear the way for Prohibition. We later repealed Prohibition, but kept the income tax.

In 2011, Joseph Bishop-Henchman wrote, “The 16th Amendment of 1913, allowing Congress to levy a federal income tax, helped pave the way for Prohibition, but World War I helped stir up the pot. When the United States entered the war in 1917, anyone of German heritage was suspect. Since most brewers were of German descent, the Anti-Saloon League used this to equate migrants and drinking with being anti-American.

“On the other side, as the Great Depression deepened in the 1930s, income tax revenues plummeted and there was a question about why we were foregoing all that tax revenue and jobs from alcohol sales and production?”

The government uses taxes as cattle prods to change the behavior of citizens. We tax cigarettes to discourage smoking. We tax alcohol to discourage drinking. We tax income to discourage working.

It is about time we started discouraging being taken to the cleaners in international trade.

Trump said, “If imposing tariffs and protective barriers made nations poor, then every country on Earth would be racing to eliminate these policies.”

“To all of the foreign presidents, prime ministers, kings, queens, ambassadors and everyone else who will soon be calling to ask for exemptions from these tariffs, I say, ‘Terminate your own tariffs, drop your barriers.’

“April 2, 2025, will forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America’s destiny was reclaimed, and the day that we began to make America wealthy again.”

But what would a multi-billionaire know about economics, right?

By the way, he is seeking permission from regulators to sell some or all of his Truth Social shares, worth $2.3 billion.

How can I get Krugman to dub me a financial loser?

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Post-cataract surgery checkup went well. I got as far as the E on the eye chart. I cannot wait to discover what the other letters are in next week’s follow up visit.