Are Republicans Being Hypocrites on Tariffs?
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Not all of them, but a bunch of Republicans have done an about-face on tariffs and will likely do another one if and likely when Trump renegotiates trade relations and lowers or drops the tariff increases he is celebrating right now. 





Trump certainly isn’t being hypocritical. Rightly or wrongly, he believes with all his heart he is doing the right thing and clearly has some theory of the case for why his move on tariffs is the right one. He has been talking about the hollowing out of America due to bad trade deals for decades. He ran on this platform, and come hell or high water he is going to go through with his plan. 

As I wrote earlier, I am agnostic about what Trump is doing, not because I don’t have an opinion on tariffs in the abstract- tariffs are bad economic policy, and the optimal tariff rate is zero in all countries. If Trump is imposing tariffs because he thinks that high tariffs lead to prosperity, then I believe he is wrong. 

But Trump is a negotiator with a long track record of using his pronouncements as tools in his negotiations. I think it is just as likely that his goal is to drive all tariffs down in all countries, creating a much fairer trade regime that will ultimately benefit everyone, including American consumers. I have no proof of that and could very well be wrong, but if that is his strategy and it works, he will indeed have accomplished something truly great. 





So I am waiting and seeing because that is all I CAN do, and Trump has a track record that earns him a lot of runway. The way he is talking right now I suspect that he has something up his sleeve, and things will turn out just fine. So Trump, at least, is certainly no hypocrite on this issue. He may be doing the right thing or the wrong thing, but he is doing what he believes. 

His supporters, though? Yes, I think many of them have turned on a dime out of loyalty to Trump, and I have to say that it pains me as much as when Democrats give me whiplash by changing their arguments on a dime. 

I have a hard time, for instance, believing that cynics on Wall Street are selling off their stocks just to own Trump. Trillions have been lost–perhaps based on unfounded fear, or perhaps not–but it is ridiculous to think that people are throwing away trillions in equity to make a political statement. Wall Street believes that the Trump tariffs are here to stay. and they hate tariffs. 

I love Laura, but nobody is burning cash at this rate over politics. People are selling stocks because they believe that Trump loves tariffs and wants them forever. And many of the Republicans defending Trump’s tariffs would be going crazy pointing to the stock market drop as proof of the insanity of this policy if Joe Biden had just done what Trump did. 





Republicans who were free marketers until 10 minutes ago are changing their tune, falling in line with Trump’s rhetoric rather than expressing anything so cautious as what I just said, and lots of MAGA types are attacking Rand Paul for betraying Trump. Paul isn’t betraying Trump by opposing Trump’s policy. He is being consistent and sticking to principle, and I thought that is what we wanted our conservative legislators to do. 

Were I in Paul’s place, I might hedge my bets with a “wait and see” stance, but it would offend my sensibilities to join a chorus singing off the same song sheet if I thought the tune was awful. We all have to make compromises to achieve common goals, but Rand Paul and other tariff opponents are speaking up because they sincerely believe that Trump’s tariff policies have the potential to crater the world economy. 

Trade wars are awful for everyone, and if you only look at the positives without considering the trade-offs, you can make almost anything look smart. But in the real world, there are always trade-offs, and history shows that mercantilism–using trade policies to advantage your country at the expense of others–harms everyone. 





Why, you may wonder, do other countries not suffer when they impose higher tariffs on our products than their own? After all, Trump is right that a lot of countries impose high tariffs on US goods without trade retribution from us, at least until Trump decided to. 

The answer is pretty simple: they do, just not as much as if the US imposed retaliatory trade. If local producers can’t compete with US goods on an even playing field, then imposing trade restrictions to boost local goods in, say, France does harm the French. They wind up paying higher prices for French goods or American goods they want due to the tariffs. If the US retaliates, they also lose out on the opportunity to sell more products to us. 

Even the most basic understanding of economics or history shows us this. One of the reasons Great Britain boomed was the growing realization that international trade was a positive, and they lowered trade barriers around the time that the Industrial Revolution happened. It wasn’t out of generosity–it was for their own good. 

The Republican Party has opposed trade and industrial policies because they understand that more trade is better than less for everybody. Unfortunately, our reflexive support of trade has blinded us to a potential opportunity to expand trade even more by using the threat of a trade war to drive everybody’s tariffs down. Our trading partners have subsidized their own industries at the expense of Americans, and we tolerated it in order to avoid sparking a trade war that would be even worse than suffering the unfairness. 





Trump has decided that he wants to risk a trade war to create the opportunity to rebalance world trade more favorable to America. At least, I think that is what he is doing. 

If Republicans supporting Trump’s gamble are just cheering him on, understanding that he is playing chicken, so be it. That is defensible and just may be absolutely correct. But if they are cheering on the idea of permanently higher tariffs after spending years opposing them, then they are hypocrites. 

I know people get mad at the Thomas Massies and Rand Pauls for being so principled. But I, for one, am thrilled that SOMEBODY in politics will say what they actually think.