From the moment it became clear Donald Trump would become the 47th President of the United States, perhaps no policy issue has elicited as much handwringing, panic, and doomsday predictions from the “expert” class as Trump’s sweeping tariff agenda. Despite the mounting hysteria, these predictions are not only factually misguided, but also willfully overlook America’s rich history of successful tariffs and protectionist trade policies.
Without interruption, the corporate media, the Democrat Party establishment, and Old Guard Republicans have issued a series of apocalyptic forecasts that could befall the American people if Trump’s tariff agenda is successfully implemented—from increased prices on consumers to soaring grocery and drug costs and outright “chaos” and “economic nightmare.”
Trump’s pro-tariff campaign platform in 2016 elicited similar predictions from many purported economic experts and free trade absolutists who feared a departure from what was then conventional Republican trade policy. But not only did Trump’s trade platform help unleash an economic boom, it also signaled a return to the beginnings of the American conservative movement rather than a departure from it.
From 1790 to 1914, tariffs made up the main source of federal revenue and served as an indispensable component of American foreign policy. In fact, the first major piece of legislation passed in the United States after the ratification of the Constitution was the Tariff Act of 1789, which was enacted in large part to protect the emerging American manufacturing industry.
As Robert Lighthizer, former U.S. trade representative under President Trump (who is also expected to have a major role in the second Trump administration) observed in the early 2010s, “For most of its 157-year history, the Republican Party has been the party of building domestic industry by using trade policy to promote U.S. exports and fend off unfairly traded imports. American conservatives have had that view for even longer.” From Alexander Hamilton to Presidents William McKinley and Calvin Coolidge, tariffs and other protectionist economic policies have long been defining elements of the American conservative tradition.
In 2016, after decades of economic failures wrought by a rigid Republican commitment to unfettered international trade, the Trump administration’s tariff-based approach sought to return the party to its roots. As Trump understood, tariffs are effective not only in that they force other countries to pay for foreign imports, but also in that they bring manufacturing back to American shores and protect the economic interests of America’s working class.
Throughout his first four years in office, Trump imposed tariffs on $1.8 billion in imports of washing machines, $8.5 billion in imports of solar panels, and hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods. He also instituted additional tariffs on foreign aluminum and steel products and later authorized $28 billion in aid, which was funded in full by the tariffs paid by China, for farmers who had long been subjected to detrimental trade policies.
Trump also negotiated with Japan to cut tariffs and open its market to $7 billion in American agricultural products, which was of notable benefit to American farmers. After successive administrations shelled out taxpayer dollars to foreign countries, Trump finally ensured American producers were taken care of first.
Despite headlines that insisted Trump’s tariffs would “Hurt America More Than China” and “hurt the U.S. economy rather than benefit American workers,” research has found that the vast majority of the cost increases from Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods were paid by the Chinese consumers rather than American consumers. As Peter Navarro, former Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy in the Trump White House, explained, China paid for the tariffs in three ways: by “cutting their prices,” crushing their currency value, and dealing with a “fleeing” supply chain. As Lighthizer wrote for The Economist, “The backlash from farmers and others that was predicted by pundits never happened.”
Furthermore, the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration triggered an exodus of American companies out of China, curbing Chinese investment. Consequently, even Biden Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo was forced to concede that Trump’s tariffs were “effective” in their protection of American manufacturing industries. Notably, Biden kept—and in some cases even increased—Trump’s preexisting China tariffs.
Throughout the course of his 2024 campaign, Trump once again advanced a broad tariff agenda, calling specifically to “phase in a system of universal, baseline tariffs on most foreign products” to build up American industries.
“As tariffs on foreign producers go up, taxes on American producers will go down and go down very substantially. And that means a lot of jobs coming in,” Trump said in a policy video. “Not only will this system end our gaping trade deficits—and they are massive right now—and bring back millions of American jobs—it will also bring trillions and trillions of dollars pouring into the U.S. Treasury from foreign countries and allow us to invest that money in American workers, American families, and American communities.”
Trump has also detailed plans to revoke China’s “most favored nation” trade status and adopt new rules preventing American companies from “pouring investments into China, along with calling for the passage of the “Trump Reciprocal Trade Act,” under which “other countries will have two choices—they’ll get rid of their tariffs on us, or they will pay us hundreds of billions of dollars, and the United States will make an absolute fortune.”
“There will be no more unilateral economic surrender like we’ve done for many, many decades,” Trump has further said. According to some reports, Trump is even considering imposing tariffs as a means to end the federal income tax—which would mark a historic return to the nation’s 19th century economic attitude.
Following the successes of Trump’s trade war and reinstatement of tariffs in foreign and economic policy, the path forward for the nation should be strikingly clear. Rather than remaining inflexibly tied to the international trade policies that have sparked decades’ worth of American economic decay and led to a hollowing out of our manufacturing industry and the loss of millions of jobs, the American ruling class should follow President Trump’s America First economic model of low taxes on Americans and increased tariffs on foreign producers.
During an October discussion on tariffs with Bloomberg’s editor-in-chief and “free trade” absolutist John Micklethwait, Trump delivered a well-deserved swing at the economic expert class—including Micklethwait himself—for defending globalist trade policies and imperiling American industries for generations. “They’ve been wrong about everything,” Trump said of the economic establishment. “So have you, by the way, you’ve been wrong. You’ve been wrong all your life on this stuff.”
Starting this January, the establishment class of globalist elites bemoaning the use of tariffs will almost certainly be reminded that they are wrong yet again—and that a strong tariff platform will not only further the interests of American industries, American workers, and American families, but also ensure enduring American prosperity.
Aaron Flanigan is the pen name of a writer in Washington, D.C.