The Oscars were awarded this past weekend, and the actors could not resist making political statements to grab some headlines from the obliging left-wing press. Instead of a celebration of great acting and gripping movies, yet again we were subjected to lopsided, tiresome political jokes and speeches.
Instead of using the Oscars platform to criticize President Trump, Hollywood’s out-of-touch mega-millionaires should have given him an award for promising to fix our broken economy and secure the border.
The president deserves some type of award. He has deployed the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cut out waste, fraud, and abuse. The Trump administration has promised not to spend more money on overseas wars and has eliminated the U.S. Agency for International Development to stop outsourcing U.S. taxpayer dollars. President Trump is also pressuring Congress to extend his tax cuts to keep personal income taxes low for American citizens.
The one reservation I have is with Trump’s tariff policy going forward, which is being pushed by a cadre of Trump staff who don’t care about economic growth and merely want to start a new trade war. The president issued an executive order on Monday, further raising his prior tariffs on China. The White House Rapid Response 47 team announced, “President Trump has raised the tariff on the People’s Republic of China to 20% over their failure to address the fentanyl pouring into our country.” Trump added 10% to his existing 10% tariffs to increase pressure on China to resolve the issue of drug smuggling. The hope is that this increased pressure is a temporary measure.
Tariffs are a great tool when they are temporary and used as leverage for better trade deals, national security concessions, or something else. Tariffs are destructive if imposed on a permanent basis because they result in higher costs to American consumers and manufacturers who use imported products to manufacture domestically. Furthermore, they spur trade partners to target American farmers and manufacturers for retaliatory tariffs.
The president was smart to push temporary tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China last month. They resulted in movement on border security and fentanyl imports. Reuters reports that Trump is in negotiations on a new round of tariffs and “has vowed to impose 25% tariffs on all imports from Canada and Mexico, with 10% for Canadian energy. CEOs and economists say the action, covering more than $900 billion worth of annual U.S. imports from its southern and northern neighbors would deal a serious setback to the highly integrated North American economy.” If these tariffs are merely a threat or temporary, they will have a good result for the economy.
The past examples of the impact tariffs have on the economy are clear. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce studied tariffs imposed in 2018 and 2019, citing The Economist that “the average applied U.S. tariff rose from under 3% to nearly 14% in that period.” They also cited The Tax Foundation, concluding that those tariffs were the “equivalent to one of the largest tax increases in decades.” The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that these tariffs impacted American households with $1,200 in increased costs. The Chamber of Commerce argued that instead of increasing tariffs, the president should consider “the case for tariff relief” to “help counter soaring inflation, shore up the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturers, and remedy the unfairness of a tariff system that hits the poor hardest.”
The president should stick to his guns, using the threat of tariffs and the imposition of temporary ones as ammunition to leverage better trade deals and to lower foreign tariffs on American exports while also pressuring foreign leaders on border security and the threat of these nations allowing dangerous drugs into the U.S.
President Trump deserves an award for his amazing campaign, and he should get a lifetime achievement award if he can push economic policies that reverse the stagnation we experienced under President Joe Biden. When deployed appropriately, tariffs could help achieve that. If overused, they might not get us the relief we need.
