No matter what his supporters will tell you, no matter what some appointees will try to convince you of, Donald Trump is anti-immigrant. He might be in a meeting about missile defense, but inside he is probably thinking about his wall… about shutting down immigration to the United States… about the Mexicans. Of the latter, he said, “They’re not sending their best… They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” Imagine how that makes an entire population of Mexican-Americans feel. Sadly, you hear little repudiation of Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric from his homeland security officials, who appear to be living in a dazed state of Stockholm syndrome.
The president has also weighed the idea of dropping the number of foreign refugees admitted into the United States—which tend to be people fleeing persecution from poor, non-white countries—down to zero. Yes, you read that correctly: zero… zilch… nada. He already slashed the number to historic lows. In the meantime, he’s announced a host of tight restrictions on potential new immigrations, including the imposition of a wealth test. I wonder if, in all his years in New York, Trump ever saw the words at the base of the Statue of Liberty, which read in part: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” If he did, it didn’t mean anything to him.
The bottom line for Republicans is this: The United States can have an open door without having “open borders,” but we cannot preserve the country we love by slamming that door in the faces of those who most aspire to join our nation.
Trading Away Principles
The president’s biggest abdication of conservative policies is in the realm of economics. Republicans have long stood for free trade, believing the open exchange of goods is a fundamental right. The United States is more prosperous than any nation in history because of it. However, Donald Trump is a dogged protectionist. He has created new barriers to trade, justified by an inverted view of economics that has been discredited for hundreds of years.
Fundamentally, Trump does not understand how trade works. When experts try to explain it to him, he either half listens or only hears what he wants to hear. What he wants to hear, of course, is that his trade wars with other countries are a brilliant move and a big success. His favorite weapon in these economic conflicts is the tariff. The president believes adding fees to incoming foreign goods “will bring in FAR MORE wealth to our Country.” We’ve endured years of him spewing this false notion.
Many experts know this is crazy. Why would a president deny Americans the opportunity to pay less for their products? Why would he purposefully make the goods they buy more expensive? As one economist explained, it should be in the public interest “in every country” to let the people “buy whatever they want from those who sell it cheapest… The proposition is so very manifest that it seems ridiculous to take any pains to prove it.” This wasn’t a recent observation. It was the father of capitalism, Adam Smith, writing in the 1700s. His point is more relevant than ever.
To understand how far off the reservation the president has gone, you have to look at the world through his soda straw. Trump believes placing a tariff—or tax—on incoming goods will make us rich. Let’s say he imposed a 20 percent tariff on sweaters from India. In Trump’s mind, that means for every thirty-dollar sweater shipped from India, we will collect six dollars in fees, meaning the Indians basically would be paying us to buy their sweaters. Sounds good, right? It gets better. With the resulting higher price of sweaters, US companies can afford to get back into the sweater business, and they start competing with India because the fee only applies to foreign products. So they can sell them at a slightly lower cost to Americans. The result is new jobs in the US sweater industry. Win-win for America!
Not so fast. This infantile logic has been repeated for ages, despite Adam Smith’s timeless words. Here is what really happens. As soon as the tariff is placed on sweaters, the extra cost will be passed to consumers. The Indians won’t pay the six dollars, Americans will pay for it. Those same Americans will be forced to spend more money on clothing than they were before. Multiply that across the country and that’s billions and billions of dollars extra they will have to spend on sweaters, and less on other products they need. Sure, some US companies will be incentivized to start making sweaters, creating low-paying jobs. But what will go unnoticed is the impact everywhere else—the billions of dollars other companies will lose because Americans are spending it on something they shouldn’t be. Better-paying jobs will disappear elsewhere.
The economics are painfully obvious. Tariffs don’t work. They are just a massive tax on Americans, robbing them of their hard-earned money. Regrettably, no living human has been able to help the president see this reality. Believe me, many among us have tried. His convoluted view of economics is beyond repair.
The debate has created schisms within the team. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has fought behind closed doors for a level-headed approach to tariffs. He has recommended against some of the arbitrary and sudden moves made by the president. Mnuchin has also repeatedly attempted to ease panic in private industry by downplaying the trade wars, only to be rebuked by advisors at the White House for supposedly speaking out of turn. Folks such as Peter Navarro have seen their stock with Trump rise for cheerleading his actions, although they still privately admit frustration because there’s no telling whether he’ll change his mind at any given moment and raise fees further without a plan. As with any other issue, the reasonable voices are being sidelined.
Conservatives must admit this is “back-door” big government. Trump helped push a major tax-cut bill through Congress in 2017, but the consequences of his tariffs will cost the American people more than the money they saved from the legislation, according to estimates. This is a sneaky and contemptible way for the president to raise taxes without people realizing it. Trump knows this is the case. He’s already talked with aides about how he’ll spend the extra money from his tariff taxes. In a news conference, he also threw around the possibility that some of it might be spent on disaster response. Tomorrow, it might be an addition to the White House or extra border wall, who knows.
I am not making the argument that there are no circumstances which warrant limitations on, or the cessation of, trade with foreign countries. Throughout our history, there have been points in which we’ve decided it’s not in America’s interest to trade with certain nations, particularly when we are engaged in armed conflict against an aggressor. I’ve argued to fellow Trump administrational officials that governments such as China do not deserve to have access to certain US goods, which could allow them to spy on their people or gain a competitive military edge. But we must also recognize that free trade is one of our most potent weapons to lift people out of poverty and empower them to take control over their destinies, rather than allowing autocrats to dictate their future.
The larger concern here at home is that, as he ratchets up his trade wars, the president could trigger a recession and wreck the economy. Deep inside he must share this concern. It’s probably one of the reasons he lashes out at agency heads and advisors who have warned him about the consequences of high tariffs. In the meantime, Trump is acting like a dictator. At one point, he tweeted, “Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China.” That’s not how a democratic system works, Mr. President. You can’t “order” American companies where to make their products. The markets have been spooked by his increasingly unhinged behavior on the matter, and top CEOs have warned the president he needs to reverse course.