5 Times the Trump Team Told Americans To Accept Being Poorer
https://reason.com/2025/05/02/5-times-the-trump-team-told-americans-to-accept-being-poorer/
Tag: taxes
Trump’s Foreign Film Tariffs Could Stick Us With Nothing but Disney Movies
“Tariffs on movies produced overseas might drive Hollywood to film more intensively in the United States, but it also makes it more difficult and expensive for American audiences to see movies made by foreign companies. Films from South Korea, India, Europe, and elsewhere compete with the U.S. film industry in terms of culture, ideas, and sometimes politics. Tariffs on overseas productions could effectively trap us with the products of Hollywood and reduce its need to adjust to the tastes of the viewing public.”
https://reason.com/2025/05/07/trumps-foreign-film-tariffs-could-stick-us-with-nothing-but-disney-movies/
Trump’s ‘They Can Have 5’ Moment is an Attack on Capitalism
“Americans produce a lot and consume a lot. We have among the highest average incomes and we buy a lot of stuff. We derive pleasure from acquiring and using material things, whether they’re toys, clothes, video games, or cars. If 37 dolls make you happy, and you have the means, then go out and buy 37 dolls. It is not a question of whether we need them or not.
Trump’s comments are an explicit rejection of materialism, abundance, and capitalism itself. I much prefer the Trump who was obsessively tweeting about stocks going up in his first term. Not only is Trump not tweeting about stocks, but he seems entirely indifferent to the prospect of a recession.
In other comments, Trump has said that prosperity can be achieved through tariffs—which is obviously untrue—so it seems likely that he’s willing to trade off some short-term economic pain for potential long-term gain. But as any student of economics will tell you, the tariffs are all pain, and even if the president doesn’t expect a recession, we are probably going to get one.”
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“There doesn’t seem to be as much visceral outrage at Trump’s assertion that American girls can make do with less. Yet, if there is a greater good here, Trump has been unable to articulate it. If the tariffs are in place simply because Trump romanticizes the late 1800s and thinks we can finance government spending with tariff revenue, then we are doomed.
This rhetoric from Trump has a great deal in common with Bernie Sanders’ anti-capitalist worldview. Between the tariffs, the increasingly progressive income taxes, the incompetent attempt to cut government spending, and the explicit anti-materialism, Trump is off to a bad start with capitalists.
In the past, those with a desire for free-ish markets would generally vote Republican. At least in the past, the Republicans were pro-growth. What does it mean when both major political parties are anti-growth and anti-materialism? What does it mean when the political apparatus of a country is wholly aligned for it to fail?”
https://reason.com/2025/05/07/trumps-they-can-have-5-moment-is-an-attack-on-capitalism/
Twin Deficit Crisis: ‘This Is How You End Empires’, Recession Imminent? | Darius Dale
Republicans and Democrats are hurtling the U.S. toward a debt crisis. The trade deficit cannot be fixed by bullying foreign countries. To fix the country’s economic woes, the U.S. needs to lower spending to reduce or eliminate the budget deficit. The U.S. depends on the world to buy U.S. debt. If they buy less, interest rates will destroy the U.S. economy. The U.S. needs to fix the budget deficit to prevent this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lixA8SuJf2E
Trump’s Tariffs Are Starting To Kill Jobs
“Goldman Sachs estimates that the tariffs will create about 100,000 manufacturing jobs while destroying 500,000 others.”
https://reason.com/2025/04/18/trumps-tariffs-are-starting-to-kill-jobs/
Trump’s Tariffs Are Causing an Economic Boom for D.C. Lobbyists
“Lobbying expenditures on trade issues were a staggering 277 percent higher in the first quarter of 2025 than in the first quarter of 2024, according to data reported to the clerk of the House of Representatives and compiled by Advancing American Freedom Foundation, a conservative nonprofit. In raw dollars, lobbying firms reported spending $4.9 million on trade-related issues in the first three months of this year, up from $1.3 million during the same three months in 2024.
There’s also been a huge expansion in the number of lobbying firms working on the tariff issue. According to the House data, 212 different entities registered some spending on tariff lobbying in the first quarter of this year, up from just 89 that worked on tariff issues in the first three months of last year.
And the average cost to businesses is increasing too. Compared to last year, the average tariff lobbying contract is now 21 percent higher, according to AAFF’s analysis.”
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“”Although President Donald Trump popularized calls to ‘drain the swamp,’ his favorite policy tool, tariffs, has actually enlarged it and generated a massive financial windfall for K Street lobbyists while hardworking American families pick up the tab,” writes Joel Griffith, policy adviser at AAFF, in the Washington Examiner.
In practice, that means some businesses have sought relief from tariffs for themselves while pushing for higher tariffs on competitors.”
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“This is also exactly what happened during the first Trump trade war. A Lehigh University study published last year found that politically connected firms—specifically, those that donated to Republican candidates, including Trump—were more likely to succeed when asking the government for an exemption on imports that would normally be subject to tariffs.”
https://reason.com/2025/04/23/trumps-tariffs-are-causing-an-economic-boom-for-d-c-lobbyists/
Another American ally just issued an economic warning because of the trade war
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/another-american-ally-just-issued-an-economic-warning-because-of-the-trade-war/ar-AA1DYW80?ocid=msedgntp&pc=NMTS&cvid=02be7e06916845d1b25fd667f10f3f71&ei=11
Are US Ports Empty and What Impact Does the Tariff Have on Global Shipping?
Tariffs’ effects on costs and shipping have a multi-month delay due the time it takes to ship and businesses stocking up on goods before the tariffs.
The tariffs are very costly, and the unpredictability causes chaos and inefficiencies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33kfpNiiAmo
Trump’s Tariffs Usurp the Legislature’s Tax Power
“The Constitution vests Congress, not the president, with the power to “lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises.” Yet Trump has announced a dizzying array of “duties,” including punitive tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods, a 25 percent tax on imported cars and car parts, tariffs on Chinese goods as high as 145 percent, and a 10 percent general tax on imports that may rise further based on supposedly “reciprocal” rates that make no sense.
These levies amount to the largest tax hike since 1993 and raise tariffs more than the notorious Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930, which deepened the Great Depression by setting off a trade war. The main authority that Trump cites for these far-reaching, commerce-disrupting, price-boosting tariffs is the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 law that says nothing about tariffs.
The IEEPA—which was designed to constrain, not expand, the president’s powers—authorizes economic sanctions in response to “any unusual and extraordinary threat” to “the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States” after the president “declares a national emergency.” Although the law has been on the books for nearly half a century, no president until Trump has ever invoked it to impose a general tariff.
There are good reasons for that. The IEEPA mentions restrictions on transactions involving foreign-owned assets, but it never refers to taxes, tariffs, or any of their synonyms.”
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“The shortcut that Trump chose is inconsistent with the IEEPA in another crucial way. To justify his tariffs, he has cited two supposed “emergencies”: the influx of illicit fentanyl, which goes back a decade or more, and ongoing bilateral trade deficits, which Trump himself has been decrying since the 1980s.
Neither of those constitutes the sort of “unusual and extraordinary threat” that Congress contemplated. “A statute grounded in emergency cannot be stretched to support open-ended policymaking,” Calabresi et al. say, “especially where the alleged threat is neither imminent nor novel.”
Trump’s interpretation of the IEEPA amounts to an assault on the separation of powers. “If decades-old trade deficits now qualify as an ’emergency,'” Calabresi et al. warn, “then any President could invoke IEEPA at will to bypass Congress on matters of taxation, commerce, and industrial policy.”
That result, the brief argues, violates the “major questions” doctrine, which says any assertion of executive power involving matters of “vast political and economic consequence” must be based on “unmistakable legislative authority.” It also violates the “nondelegation” doctrine, which says Congress cannot surrender its legislative powers.”
https://reason.com/2025/04/30/trumps-tariffs-usurp-the-legislatures-tax-power/
Americans Doubt Trump’s Trade War Will Benefit Them
“”Trivium Packaging, a manufacturer of steel and aluminum containers…has shelved any expansion plans in the US for now, and the only hiring happening at its five US plants is to fill in staff losses due to attrition” because of the increased cost of the imported metal on which it relies, according to an April 17 Bloomberg report. Trivium was just one of the companies profiled in the article that “are putting hiring and expansion plans on hold while they come up with short-term plans to cope with the tariffs.”
Consumers are also changing their behavior in response to the trade war. Americans initially flocked to buy cars to beat anticipated price hikes. Purchases slowed as the expected price increases materialized, spurring the Trump administration this week to carve out some tariff relief for automakers.
But the same factors driving concerns about prices and availability regarding cars affect every other industry. According to the Federal Reserve’s latest Beige Book report on economic conditions, “uncertainty around international trade policy was pervasive” and “non-auto consumer spending was lower overall.”
Additionally, “several Districts reported that firms were taking a wait-and-see approach to employment, pausing or slowing hiring until there is more clarity on economic conditions” and “there were scattered reports of firms preparing for layoffs.”
Importantly, added the Beige Book analysis, “firms reported adding tariff surcharges or shortening pricing horizons to account for uncertain trade policy. Most businesses expected to pass through additional costs to customers.”
Basically, businesses and consumers alike are slowing spending and taking a wait-and-see attitude as they anticipate higher prices and economic disruption from the Trump administration’s protectionist policies. Americans expect the tariffs to be painful and they’re not happy about it.”
https://reason.com/2025/04/30/americans-doubt-trumps-trade-war-will-benefit-them/