If there is one subject most Americans have difficulty grasping, it is economics. Labeled “the dull science” for good reason, savvy politicians throw a litany of facts and figures to win favor with voters, but minus the moving parts that tell the whole story. No economic topic is more abused and confusing than tariffs.
Simply stated, a tariff is a tax on imports entering the US. Other countries levy them on our exports. Our tariff rate on thousands of imports averages around 2%. The consumer, not the exporting country, pays it. That’s you. It is not itemized on your receipt since the store or website you patronized has already paid it to our government and added the cost to your bill as a hidden tax.
Tariffs protect American manufacturers and farmers from foreign competition. Normally they are placed on items, not countries, as convicted felon Donald Trump proposes with his “America First.” plan. “Tariff Man” threats of 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, coupled with up to 60% from China, would be met with retaliatory tariffs on our exports, resulting in inflation and possible shortages for both countries.
According to the USDA, the US imports 60% of its fresh fruit and 38% of its fresh vegetables. A tariff war would mean higher prices at the supermarket. Expect similar results on manufactured goods. Quid pro quo.
Eliminate tariffs? Also a bad idea. Corporate elites prospered with Bill Clinton’s NAFTA no-and-low-tariff policy to enrich their coffers from trade with Canada and Mexico by outsourcing production, closing American factories, and worsening the Rust Belt.
Prior to Clinton, Ronald Reagan legitimized stock buybacks, illegal before his administration. Corporate portfolios ballooned with money that could have hired more workers and provided them better pay, hours, and pensions instead of their inferior 401k replacements. Together, both stock buybacks and NAFTA hurt the American working class.
Used wisely, tariffs are a sound economic policy. But when politics “trumps” reality, tariffs can have a chilling effect. The Smoot=Hawley Tariff Act (1930), one of the highest in American history, was designed to lift the US out of The Great Depression. Instead it had the opposite effect. Chastised as “economic stupidity” by Henry Ford, it increased unemployment and misery.
America First? More like America Alone.
ED ENGLER, Sebring, Fla.
On Jan. 6, 2021, the heavily armed, Trump-incited mob attack on the U.S. Capitol building physically injured 174 police officers who responded to the attack, one Capitol Police officer who died from two strokes after being pepper-sprayed during the attack and four officers who died by suicide within seven months. The attack was not just on the U.S. Capitol building, but also on democracy and the rule of law. It was “likely the largest single-day, mass assault of law enforcement officers in our nation’s history.” Subsequently it was determined that the number of officers who were physically injured was even higher, let alone those who have suffered trauma as a result of the day’s events.
Trump has said that he’ll “most likely” begin immediately pardoning Jan. 6 defendants. Trump told Time magazine. “We’re going to look at each individual case, and we’re going to do it very quickly, and it’s going to start in the first hour that I get into office. And a vast majority of them should not be in jail.”
More than 1,500 defendants have been charged and 1,100 convicted in the sprawling Capitol breach probe, with more than 600 being sentenced to prison. Defendants were arrested, convicted and sentenced all throughout 2024, but the cases received diminishing coverage.
Members of society are told to support your local police, but what about the fellow police officers themselves? So many police officers supported and endorsed Trump in the 2024 presidential election and so did many police unions and national police organizations including the Police Benevolent Association, New York City’s largest police union and the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest police labor organization.
It’s one thing to support a presidential candidate, one who even incited the mob attack, but to see the police officers, their unions and organizations just sit back and allow the mob who injured their fellow officers to be pardoned is the ultimate show of disrespect for their fellow police officers. Shouldn’t they all be at the front of the line assuring that these attackers of the police remain in prison and not be pardoned.
Frankly, if these police officers cannot respect their fellow officers, why and how should we, the general public, support the police. Jan. 6th was a day of infamy. Why should the perpetrators of the insurrection be allowed to go free?
But, in America, there are usually two sides or more to a story. President-elect Trump insisted that the January 6th attack, when his supporters stormed the Capitol and assaulted scores of law enforcement officers, was not a day of violence, but a “day of love” when “nothing” was “done wrong.”
Am I being too hard on the police? Well, pardon me.
ALVIN GOLDBERG, Great Neck, N.Y.
Congratulations to [Art Cullen’s] friend [in “Waiting and Wondering, 12/1/24 TPP] for his complicity, along with the other (almost) 90 million eligible voters who also chose to not exercise one of our most precious rights as American citizens! He says he cares about climate change? Not enough, I guess. He believes that “money orders things”? So do I, that is why I voted against big money. Or, at least, the lesser of the two.
He likes conservation programs, what will he think when Trump/Grassley/Reynolds run a pipeline through his favorite place? Will that motivate him to get off his hands and participate? I’m not sure if the immigrants will be deported en masse, it doesn’t seem likely. But then again, it didn’t seem likely that America would elect a convicted felon/adjudicated rapist either. What I can be sure of is if the immigrants get deported, Blackrock et al will buy up all the newly vacant properties and promptly raise the rent!
I sincerely hope that he can continue to ‘follow most of the news’, at least until all we have is state run media!
Yeah, it’d be nice to just hide and watch, but I’ve always been kind of fond of democracy, and I’ve got children and grandkids to think about, and to give my best effort for them!
KURT THOMPSON, Molina, Colo.
The humiliating calamity that swept across the misnamed America’s voting stations on Nov. 5 can be fully understood by any curious student who consults Ann Case’s and Angus Deaton’s indispensable volume, “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism” (Princeton, 2020). Additional background enlightenment can be secured from Charles Derber’s vital “Sociopathic Society (Paradigm, 2013). It’s been one more giant leap to “1984,” following the actually rigged results in 2000, 2004 and 2016, there’s just time for both the U.S. Zionists and self-styled “Christians” to prepare for their incredibly unending residence in Gehenna. Best not to dwell upon the fates of all the other helpless species presently still extant on Earth.
VIRGE MacLEOD, Bonners Ferry, Idaho
I’d like to respond to [Stephen] Appell’s takedown [“Rall’s Attempt at Satire” letter in 1/1-15-25 TPP] of [Ted] Rall’s article “Stein Wins” [12/1/24 TPP]. My first impression of his letter was the angry, bitter tone. If we’re all readers of TPP, couldn’t we discuss differences in a more comradely tone? Instead of immediately condemning the article as “tasteless and inane”!
As far as the ‘indistinguishability’ of the two major parties, I would submit that the majority of serious people on the US “Left” have come to the conclusion that the national Democratic Party abandoned the working class some time ago, maybe in the ’90s. And those that hadn’t arrived at that conclusion before Oct. 7, 2023, certainly have been disgusted and outraged by the Democrats’ full-throated support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response. Israel’s far-right regime has been condemned by both Amnesty International and the UN (as well as tens of thousands of Israelis) for it’s genocidal attacks on Palestinian civilians, the majority being women, children and elders.
Regarding a vote for Jill Stein being a vote for Trump: I disagree. I submit that a vote for Stein was, in fact, a vote FOR Dr. Jill. And maybe a vote against the Harris ticket. Kamala had pledged to continue to provide all the military/monetary support that the far right in Israel demanded! Maybe Netanyahu was “the tail wagging the dog”! Looks like he played the hapless Dems like a fine-tuned fiddle!
Finally, your publication’s habit of providing space for a wide range of ideas is a strength, not a weakness! Let us continue to strive towards a more perfect union; one that gives more power to the working class, and less power to the oligarchs, or the “Barons,” as Austin Frerick’s new book details. In solidarity,
MATT HOFFMAN, St. Paul, Minn.
Regarding Sam Uretsky’s article about RFK Jr. [“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Makes Diseases Deadly Again,” 12/15/24 TPP] and the condition called spasmodic dysphonia, I have enclosed a copy of two pages from a biography, “The Real RFK Jr.: Trials of a Truth Warrior,” by Dick Russell (Skyhorse Publishing, 2023). Uretsky may believe that the source of the disorder is unknown, but clearly the (for-profit) pharmaceutical industry does know the source.
The murder of the United Health CEO on Wall Street and the explosive reaction by the general public exposes for all to see the corruption, greed and tyranny of the for-profit insurance conglomerate. Will those corporations heed the wake-up call or will a revolution be necessary to disable the robber barons in order to restore the equality and democracy that we have claimed is the best in the world?
CAROLINE GARDNER, Freeland, Wash.
Looks like President-elect Donald Trump is creating a corrupt and garish version of JFK’s Camelot. So welcome to Scamelot!
CARL HANSON, Albuquerque, N.M.
From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2025
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