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Trump's Tariffs Will Raise Prices, Slow The Economy, Create More Chaos, Make America A Rogue Nation and Far Less Safe

Trump is betraying America and the American people AGAIN and we must fight

Simon Rosenberg

Feb 2

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Morning all. First, some good news. I want to thank everyone who has contributed to our “get Ken Martin off to a strong start” campaign. We’ve raised over $31,000 so far from over 400 of you - great work everyone! We are shooting to raise $100,000 for Ken and the DNC by March 31st. You can contribute to the campaign here and help ensure that Ken and his team get off to a strong start in this time of enormous challenge for the country.

Next, the not so good news. If President Trump goes through with his announced tariffs, and doesn’t find some fig leaf to back down as he did with the country of Colombia last weekend, it will be one of the single most reckless acts by an American President in our history. Perhaps the most reckless, and irresponsible, and idiotic.

For a deep dive on tariffs and the harm they will bring to America and the American people watch my interview with Dr. Rob Shapiro from last Monday. A quick recap:

Tariffs are a tax on goods imported from aboard that we and our companies pay to the US government. As Trump has announced tariffs on our three largest trading partners - Canada, China and Mexico - prices will rise on just about everything immediately, but particularly on food and gas/oil. Rather than getting prices and inflation down, Trump is taking actions that will raise prices and re-ignite inflation.

Trump needs the revenues from tariffs to help pay for his tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. As Rob argues in our interview, in this case tariffs are a direct transfer of wealth from working people to the oligarchs. Tariffs are an enormous new tax paid for by working Americans. Again Trump promised lower prices, lower inflation, lower taxes. He is actually giving the American people higher prices, higher inflation, higher taxes.

Here is what America’s Treasury security wrote about tariffs a year ago:

Trump’s tariffs will slow the economy and cause unemployment to rise. So yes, Trump is giving us higher prices, higher inflation, higher taxes, higher interest rates, slower growth and higher unemployment. It is hard to imagine a more fundamental betrayal of the core promises he made to the American people during the campaign.

These are not the only ways Trump is working to raise prices and taxes on working people. The emerging Republican budget deal will also raise taxes on working people and cut critical benefit programs that will cause health care and other vital services to become more expensive while providing tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. Rounding up millions of workers during a time of low unemployment will create labor shortages, harm our businesses, devastate families and communities and cause prices to rise on food, health care, day care, restaurants/hotels and many other items.

History tells us that trade wars lead to real wars. The rules-based global system America and the world built after the most devastating war in human history, WWII, has worked to eliminate tariffs among nations, learning from the experience of how the tariff and trade wars of the 1930s led to the World War of the 1940s. These new tariffs appear to be part of a Trumpian strategy to make America a rogue nation, hated by people throughout the world, for they are being rightly seen by foreign governments as a form of an unprovoked attack against their countries.

Finally, and this is perhaps the most pernicious, Trump’s tariffs appear to be part of a broader strategy designed to end the American-led global order that we and the world built after WWII. Unilateral tariffs of this magnitude, under the ridiculous pretext of a national emergency, are an abandonment of the one of the central constructs of our current global system. Trump’s desire to seize territory from other sovereign nations is also an abandonment of that global system. So is withdrawing America from the Paris climate accords and the World Health Organization and the immediate cessation with no warning and consultation of live-saving American aid throughout the developing world. If the country that imagined and built this global system over the last 80 years walks away from it - or perhaps more accurately works to savagely undermine it - it will fall.

Why does that matter? For as I discuss in my presentation With Democrats, Things Get Better, this global system, built on the foundation of FDR’s Four Freedoms, has created a golden age in human history. There has never been a better time to be alive, to do, to pursue your dreams than all of human history than during these 80 years of the Four Freedoms/Pax Americana. Life expectancy has exploded across the world; literacy rates have skyrocketed; the number of people living in extreme poverty has plummeted; more people have lived under a democracy than at any time in human history.

Today, due to America and our commitment to freedom and democracy, we are living in a golden age in human history. It appears to be a central goal of this new Trump Presidency to bring this American-led golden age to an end. So, yes, my friends, the stakes of the fight we find ourselves in right now are very high.

Why given the damage these tariffs would cause would Trump do this? Do we think these are the actions of a man who loves America? Loves freedom? We know he led an armed attack on our democracy in 2021. Now he is leading an attack on the freedom-based global system that our democracy built for the people of the world. Why? Who benefits from what is Trump is attempting to do? For it sure isn’t us. It isn’t America, or the American people.

The 2017 Intelligence Community report on Russia’s attack on the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign begins with this passage:

Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, but these activities demonstrated a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations.
We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump

the opening summary ends with this:

We assess Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at the US presidential election to future influence efforts worldwide, including against US allies

Donald Trump betrayed our country when he openly worked with the Russian government to seize power in 2016; when he attacked the Capitol and the Congress in 2021; betrayed it when he stole top secret documents and shared them others; and is now betraying all of us again in his lawless attacks against our government, our democracy and the rules based global system that has keep America prosperous, safe and free for generations. Donald Trump hates the America of the Four Freedoms, and I am profoundly worried he’s attempting to bring it down, with the help of his South African and other Russian stooges.

What can we do?

Tomorrow, let’s hit the phones. Yes we should keep working against the Unacceptable 4, but also must begin calling all of our electeds at every level and demand they fight these tariffs. City Councils should condemn the President for raising prices and harming their residents. We should attempt to pass condemnations in every state legislature that we control, and even ones we don’t. Every Governor should be denouncing these reckless and dangerous acts. Our Congressional leaders should be introducing bills to nullify these tariffs and let the Republicans block them. We need to use these outrageous tariffs, and Trump’s ongoing betrayal of the country, to wake the country up, to grow the opposition, to accelerate the process of an effective and ferocious opposition forming.

I know this is not a very Hopium-filled message this morning. But it is where we are now, and simply, we must fight as if our democracy, our freedoms and our future depend on it. Because they do.

Stay safe, and keep working hard all - Simon