The American people have been sold a pack of lies wrapped in the tattered flag of economic nationalism, peddled by a president who either does not understand history or chooses to distort it.
Donald Trump’s latest crusade for sweeping tariffs is not just misguided—it is a direct assault on the wallets of working families and a reckless revival of policies that once plunged this nation into deeper despair.
World markets reacted like their largest trading partner committed suicide.
Let us speak plainly: tariffs are not a tool of prosperity but a tax on the poor.
When Trump claims that foreign nations will foot the bill, he is lying. What Trump has hailed as America’s “Liberation Day,” sent shock waves across the world, raised the specter of a global trade war, and liberated trillions of dollars in value from companies that buy imports or export items for sale.
The truth, as economists of every stripe have long known, is that tariffs fall hardest on those who can least afford them.
The importer pays, the consumer bears the cost, and the only winners are the politically connected industries shielded from competition.
This is not speculation—it is the iron law of trade, proven time and again, from the mercantilist follies of the 18th century to the catastrophic Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930.
Ah, Smoot-Hawley—the specter Trump dares not name. Signed into law at the dawn of the Great Depression, those tariffs were meant to “protect” American jobs.
Instead, they ignited a global trade war, strangling exports, deepening economic collapse, and prolonging suffering for millions.
Historians agree: Smoot-Hawley did not save America—it helped cripple it—and ultimately worsened the Great Depression.
Yet here we are again, with a president who either ignores history or rewrites it to suit his fiction.
Trump’s claim that tariffs could pay down the national debt is a fantasy.
His insistence that America is a victim of trade is a distortion. The United States is not some pauper nation—it is the wealthiest on Earth, with a per capita GDP that dwarfs China’s and surpasses Europe’s.
Trade is not theft; it is the engine that has lifted billions from poverty and fueled American innovation.
When Trump boasts of “winning” against China, he omits the $28 billion in farmer bailouts his first term policies necessitated—a direct cost of his trade wars, paid by American taxpayers.
And what of his numbers? Fabrications piled upon distortions.
India’s motorcycle tariff is 50%, not 70%. Canada’s dairy tariffs were largely dismantled by Trump’s own trade deal. The EU’s car tariffs are high, but America’s truck tariffs are higher.
These lies are not innocent errors—they are deliberate falsehoods designed to justify a policy that will raise prices, invite retaliation, and shrink markets for American goods.
But the greatest lie of all is Trump’s revisionist history—the absurd claim that the Great Depression could have been avoided if only tariffs had remained high. The opposite is true. Smoot-Hawley accelerated disaster. The income tax, far from being some sinister plot, was a progressive reform to shift burdens from the working poor to those who could afford to pay.
The American experiment has always been one of openness—to ideas, to people, to trade. When we retreat behind walls of protectionism, we betray that legacy.
Trump’s tariffs are not a path to prosperity but a road to ruin, paved with the same stones that once led to economic calamity.
The question is not whether history will judge this folly harshly—it already has.
The question is whether the American people will see through the deception before it is too late.
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