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Your Guide to Washington and the World’s 2024 US Election Means
The author is a US Senator in Connecticut.
Economists and experts have spent the past two weeks desperately trying to decipher what the ultimate goal of President Donald Trump is tariffs. Last week’s epic flip-flop paused the majority of 90 days, but after the White House spent several days, tariffs have not increased for negotiations, but instead was a long-term strategy that helped to revive US industrial bases and revive work. But there is a simple reason why Trump’s short-lived tariffs make little economic sense. They are designed not as economic policies but as a means of enforcing loyalty to the president.
When combined with smart domestic industrial policies, tariffs help protect American employment and goods. But these chaotic-designed blanket global tariffs achieve nothing but threatening to send prices that will surge and destabilize the global economy. This makes sense. Because Trump’s goal is to impose economic disruption and require the industry lead to run to sue him for relief.
Reports say Trump admits he doesn’t care if his policies will cause a recession. He should not remember the nearly 9 million jobs lost among the 10 million Americans who lost their homes due to the Great Recession of 2008 and foreclosure. However, these tariffs were not about helping workers, returning jobs to the US, or modifying a broken global trading system. The 90-day suspension is proof of this.
How many new manufacturing plants or jobs have they been created to justify putting American retirement plans at risk? Which of the 75 countries is Trump negotiating? Did they provide not only special benefits, but also the terms of service to American workers? Or are these tariffs about putting our companies in chokeholds until they surrender?
For example, consider Apple. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick fantasized the army of millions of people who are messing up a small screw that they “wanted to come to America.” A few days later, Apple was exempt from 145% mutual tariffs on Trump on smartphones, laptop computers, hard drives, computer processors, servers and memory chips from China. Tim Cook, who personally donated $1 million to Trump’s first committee, remained a good bounty of the president. Lutnick later revealed that Apple is exempt from “mutual” tariffs, but will ensure that Apple continues to lobby the administration, rather than a soon-to-be announced tariff on semiconductors.
If Trump’s actions are understood as the use of enforcement force to meet the accomplices of an agency that otherwise stops slides towards dictatorship, it’s easy to see how tariffs fit into the plan. While some may be unbelievable, Trump appears to be running a systematic campaign to destroy any institutions that could get in his way.
He is already attacking three key pillars of American democracy. He threatened to cut off federal funding for the university, which is the heart of both academic research and youth protests. He attacks top law firms by separating them from government contracts and stripping them of their lawyers of security clearance. And he is trying to silence journalists by denialing access to government facilities unless they use languages that have been previously approved by the White House.
Now he uses tariffs to force businesses and industries to come to the White House and ask for relief. Each company or industry will likely be forced to make concessions in exchange for this relief. During the suspension, we can expect to see their companies claim one after another asserting that they will be exempt from customs duties. Perhaps the concessions are economic in nature, but perhaps political. Most of these transactions will generally be secret.
With Trump most law firms, universities, press and private companies under his thumb, it becomes almost impossible for any form of opposition to gain traction. His weaponized Justice Department can arrest protesters, and fewer lawyers will defend them. University research and academic debate about ideas that go against Trump’s ideology will be threatened. As the rule of law collapses, private companies do not oppose it. This is not an innovative new strategy. This is a global playbook for democratically elected leaders who want to stay in power forever.
Toggling tariffs on and off and granting exemptions to political allies is not about trade policy. It’s about leading American industry to the heels. The rage of the public is far more likely to stop Trump’s attempts to destroy democracy in that trajectory, if everyone can clearly see the plan he is trying to hide.
