New York Times: Harris and Trump Embrace Tariffs, Though Their Approaches Differ

August 27, 2024 Hunter Wallace 2024 Presidential Election, Conservatism, Economy, Politics, Populists 34

I could have easily included this in The Case for Trump series.

In hindsight, Donald Trump succeeded in moving the Overton Window on both trade policy and industrial policy, especially with regards to China. Trump killed the Trans-Pacific Partnership and imposed tariffs on imports from China and the European Union. He killed the Washington consensus.

New York Times:

“When Donald J. Trump ran for president in 2016, there was not much love for tariffs in Washington. Many Republicans and Democrats believed that putting levies on imports created economic inefficiencies and that freer trade was the best recipe for growth.

That view has largely fallen out of fashion in 2024. While Mr. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, differ greatly in their campaign proposals, both of their parties are increasingly embracing tariffs as an essential tool in protecting American manufacturers from Chinese and other global competitors.

It has been a sharp reversal from previous decades, when most politicians fought to lower tariffs rather than raise them. But the loss of American manufacturing jobs as a result of globalization and China’s focus on churning out cheap exports have created a bipartisan backlash against more open trade. Given that Mr. Trump’s 2016 win capitalized on such sentiments, Democrats have been striving to avoid losing voters opposed to free trade.

“On economic policy and trade issues, you have both major parties moving in the same direction,” said Nick Iacovella, a senior vice president at the Coalition for a Prosperous America, which advocates tariffs and domestic investments in industry. …”

There is a lot of misplaced activist fury at Trump which should be channeled against the Republican Congress. As with so many issues, tariffs are a great example of this. In his first term, Trump supported both tariffs on China and withdrawing troops from Syria. Congressional Republicans were against both policies and Trump needed their support in both of his impeachment trials. Instead of trying to elect a better Congress, which had to approve USMCA which replaced NAFTA, all the activist energy and rage was directed against Trump as if he somehow had total power and had failed to use it.

New York Times:

“Former President Donald J. Trump blames the global trading system for inflicting a long list of ills on the American economy including lost jobs, closed foreign markets and an overvalued dollar.

The remedy, he insists, is simple: tariffs. Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee for president, has repeatedly said he would raise tariffs if elected. China, a geopolitical and economic rival, would face an additional 50 or 60 percent tariff on its exports to the United States. He has also floated the idea of a 10 percent surcharge on exports from the rest of the world. …”

Trump is promising to impose tariffs again on Chinese imports in his second term. He even forced Biden to keep some of his tariffs. Now Kamala Harris is saying she also supports some tariffs and no taxes on tips and funding the border wall and a $6,000 child tax credit.

34 Comments

  1. Honestly, we shouldn’t focus at all on what the candidates have done in the past, we should focus totally on what they say. That makes sense, I think we can all agree…. So I hear Camel now saying she wants to build a wall. So, I am voting for her

  2. “Kamala Harris is saying she also supports ….”

    A wide gulf between ‘says’ and ‘does’.

    She doesn’t have a record to support any of that.

    Where’s she been the last 3.5 years, drunk ?

    • > Where’s she been the last 3.5 years, drunk ?

      A good portion thereof. Probably high on ganja-weed too. Not only a ho but a stupid ho. Queen Chlamydia I and her facscrotum Tampon Timmy. The perfect Clown-World ticket, though I would have greatly appreciated Biden/Fetterman as the ‘It’s a no-brainer’ ticket.

    • Because all of these guys/gals that rise to the rareified air at the top of the US political/media strata are hand-picked and groomed from an early age. You don’t actually believe that a White guy like JD Vance from some trailer trash family in Methburg, Ohio got into Yale based on merit, do you?

  4. “their approaches differ”:

    Mrs. Emhoff doesn’t have an “approach” or understanding of tariffs. She simply follows directions, the directions of Wall Street and other elites who selected her. Look at the whole forest (the system itself) not at these two meaningless, powerless little trees (Trump and Emhoff).

    If the elites need tariffs to maximize profits, then there will be tariffs, but it won’t help the proles. Tariffs are a way to further bleed (tax) the workers, while the rich are unaffected or have ways to avoid the higher prices.

    • Meredith,
      No tariffs on cheap Chinese imports wipes out local manufacturing, leaving us reliant on China for everything, and highly exposed to their volatile demeanor.
      When you have local manufacturing, you have fairly paid workers generating economic activity, creating more employment in nearby areas. You will pay more, but the product will last longer, saving you more in the long run. That is what tariffs are designed to protect. They remove China’s advantage, giving local industry a helping hand.

      • I disagree. Socialism must come first, and then local manufacturing will become much more efficient when the elites stop bleeding you for profit, and the inefficiency of their “free market competition” – the struggle for monopoly – is gone. Voting for Trump versus Mrs. Emhoff will not make it happen. Voting in the system’s “elections” will not make a difference.

        “leaving us reliant on China for everything, and highly exposed to their volatile demeanor”:

        So you want to be even more fully exposed to the REAL volatile demeanaor of the capitalist class, when it is handed full monopoly by preventing you from buying Chinese goods are so cheap, and often superiour now, because of socialism. I do not fall for the “Buy American” anti-China psychological war tactic.

        • Meredith,
          Companies have to be profitable or they can’t innovate or employ people.
          Would you buy products made in apartied era South Africa, given you sound like a leftist? Probably not. China is harvesting organs, committing genocide and using slave labour. So why is it ok to buy their products?

          • > China is harvesting organs, committing genocide and using slave labour. So why is it ok to buy their products?

            How much of that is real and how much is just crap broadcast by the Mighty Wurlitzer? One of the reasons I ask is that all of these dire reports started to appear on a daily basis soon after Xi rejected the (((Elders of Wye))) plan to move their main usury-racket to the middle-kingdom from the hollowed-out shells of Murika and Cuck Island. The final rejection was when Rothschild-scion Zuckerberg offered to name is Chinese halfling offspring after Xi who said “no”.

  5. When you have local manufacturing, you have economic security and sovereignty. You don’t want to be relying on China for everything from trucks to cutlery. What if there’s a major political rift between China and America and they decide to cut off supplies?
    I’d rather pay twice as much for a locally made product if it lasts ten times as long.
    I’ve owned Japanese cars(and lots of Aussie ones, don’t worry), but their products are great quality and they don’t have unfair trade policies in place that send entire towns to the welfare que.
    We just need to do something about unions that make our workforces less attractive to employ. Being a leftist outfit, the unions are yet another branch of the left that’s destroying the West generally.
    It’s always……the left.

    • Which unions? The few million Americans that are left in private unions or the tens of millions of low-IQ deadbeats in public AFSCME government unions suckling at the taxpayers’ teat? And, sure – the real problem in the US isn’t the jews that make up less than 2% of the population controlling 50% of the US’s wealth it’s the UAW member making $70K per year.

      • Goose is in Australia, which is still heavily unionized like Cuck Island in the pre-Blair era.

        Ringo is correct about the situation in Murika, where unions are all heavily concentrated in the public sector. Even more than with corporations, the union sector is totally enemy-owned territory. There is no competition. One cannot have a ‘white’ union, or even a ‘civic nationalist’ union, or ‘Christian’ union. All-Blax unions are allowed and Muslim unions might be allowed as well (as long as they were like the House of Saud and Egyptian regime when it came to Palestine). Unions are regulated by the Feds and of course we all know who controls that beast. The usual suspects, naturally. Unions are a profitable racket for them. Basically an enforcement arm used against companies who fail to follow Church of Woke diktats.

        • Exalted,
          Yeah, not being an insider, I guess I’ll never really know what goes on.
          In Australia, we generally go on what we see. The Jews and the dynamics of the establishment are hidden, and misunderstood.

    • “We just need to do something about unions that make our workforces less attractive to employ. ”

      Called ‘robots’.

      “their products are great quality ”

      Thanks to American TQM techniques, prior to that they produced intricate junk.

      “have economic security and sovereignty. ”

      Americans haven’t known that since the 50s.

  6. This ultimately is not about which is the best economic model, but is about ZOG openly pushing for war with China, can’t have a war if your production sits in China. I know many white nationalists will want this war as well, but this is a very bad idea. It will be expected that the majority of white males do most of the fighting.

    There is also the fact that China will easily outproduce the US and EU combined when it comes to armaments production. Such a war (if it is does not go full nuclear) will be the bane of white people, it will not go as the neocons expect it to go (this is not 1940 anymore), the only winner will be the non white world.

    • That is definitely true. Yet another reason to stay out of bankster wars. Neo-Klowns never learn though, hence the push into WW III. Their orc-legions will not fare well against the middle kingdom. Let the Neo-Klowns stand at the front of their great hordes so they can take the first volley of FPV drones. (That will be a very icy day in hell of course). Instead there will be many millions of Darwin awards available, with Kosher Klusters, made of radioactive plastic.

    • Look at the Ukraine War, Russia is doing poorly. They do have some modern weapons, but only is small amounts because they are very poor, and their modern weaponry is still usually not quite as good as the West. They also lack manpower because of the gigantic baby bust when the USSR collapsed. Russia’s whole success in past wars was just to so overwhelm their enemy with weapons and manpower that any professional edge soon waned and the tide turned in the war by attrition. That is no longer the case, however there is one power on Earth that currently can engage in this strategy of just “being so big and having so many bullets” that any edge by the opponent doesn’t matter. China. However, this may also change in the future with China also beginning the demographic collapse in birth rates just like other industrialized countries as women quite simply want to be “wine chicks buying Italian fashion accessories and popping the pill” like on that Sex in the City if you let them. To me China probably does want a reckoning by 2040 or so before they too start to wane.

      • “one power on Earth that currently can engage in this strategy of just “being so big and having so many bullets” that any edge by the opponent doesn’t matter. China. ”

        But China doesn’t have any ‘reach’. Transportation is as critical in warfare as in industry. China could only fight locally. One of Americans great strengths is its global reach.

        • China has enough conventional ballistic missiles to reach every US base, fleet, and station out past the Phillipines and do extensive damage. They have enough force projection to invade all the way to the Phillipines and even Hawaii. They already have naval superiority in the East Asia and will have it throughout the Pacific by 2030 and across the globe by 2035.

          International War is inevitable. Civil War is inevitable. Best to prepare for it. That means organizing politically to create actions groups which can promote Patriot leaders who will take is to victory over these combined threats. If Kamala wins, you won’t get that, but you still get war. You know what’s worse than war. Losing one.
          https://youtu.be/0b4g4ZZNC1E?feature=shared

        • Once the Chinese have the enough missiles to sink the carriers the global-reach will be vastly reduced along with the Murika’s Great Pink Fleet. 5000 Darwin Award contestants winning the prize at once will cause popular support for such adventures to plummet. Not that it would matter much. What would the tards do? Vote no? They already cast their votes for war for election cycles running. The die is cast.

          Even now thanks to Murika’s undying support of OUR GREATEST ALLY, the Eastern Pacific is largely unguarded. Surface vessels of all types are increasingly sitting ducks due to advances in drone technology. I doubt the Chinese would move now unless the Houthis got some advanced missiles to actually send a carrier or two to the bottom, at which point all bets are off. Murika, epicenter of Clown-World and the Empire of Lies, has it coming. There is not even the slightest inkling of repentance, just endless stupidity and evil. The mandate of heaven has been lost. The surviving morons will be red-pilled eventually, even via suppository. Trump will not save you.

    • “it will not go as the neocons expect it to go (this is not 1940 anymore)”

      But the war must still go on, because it is existential for the Talmudistic Aryan global capitalist system based in New York, Washington and London. You are not safe inside the belly of the Beast when Babylon falls.

    • Aryan,
      I doubt most people understand or care about that angle to it. They only know they want jobs and the choice to buy American made if they want to. The rest is beyond their field of expertise.

    • Full fledged war with China will eventually go nuclear. The United States military has no intention of seeing its forces overrun and destroyed in East Asia and the Pacific without using nuclear weapons. There are still existing plans for tactical nuclear weapons to be used should US Army or Marine divisions get overrun. The US still retains overwhelming tactical nuclear superiority in Asia and plan to reinforce this superiority exponentially. Russia would likely supoort her Slope Overlords now.

      There are only two futures for us. One, where China is shrunk down in size economically or demographically or both. The later happens by nuclear war. This is what everyone gets for sitting on their ass the last 30 years while they consumed more and more Chinese goods produced by our built up wealth transfered by the piratical globalist set. Best push for massive strategic nuclear defense, including Anti-ballistic missile and anti-aircraft weapons as well as defense fortifications for civilians. Happy days are over. Enjoy the sleep while prepping for the future.
      https://youtu.be/Hf1hF6YaDXQ?feature=shared

  7. Trump and the republicans had plenty of opportunities to do things when they controlled both the house and senate during the first couple years of his presidency but a bit protectionism, lowering taxes for the rich and appointing conservative judges is all they did, standard republican stuff minus the protectionism.
    Why?
    Because Trump isn’t a fascist or Nazi of course, but he isn’t a paleocon or populist either, he’s just another neoliberal imperialist, a neocon + a bit of protectionism.

    It’s the same with dems.
    Why didn’t dems codify Roe for example?
    Because they don’t actually care all that much about winning the culture war, they need the culture war to distract the masses from what’s really going on.

    The reality is both sides are more or less centrists when it comes to this cultural stuff.
    What really defines both sides is crony capitalism and imperialism, as well as Zionism.

    Just look at Kamala, her demeanor, the way she carries herself, how she cackles at everything.
    Does she look and sound like a person deeply motivated by communist ideology to you, passionate about the environment, or identity politics?
    Do you think the radical left is happy because dems get shit done while the republicans sit on their hands?
    No I’ve listened to them and they’re just as deeply unhappy as the far right because dems rarely do shit even when they have the opportunity, for better or worse.

    Kamala has the demeanor of an airhead, an empty suit, a cackling sociopath verbose idiot because that’s what she is.
    She doesn’t have a single big idea that can fit inside that tiny brain of hers.
    What motivates Kamala is money, socioeconomic status, and sex, that’s what drives her and the ruling class as a whole.

    Money and power, you don’t get to be ultra rich by being motivated by anything other than money and power because it’s super hard to get ultra rich, you can’t have other motivations getting in the way you have to be super competitive, cutthroat, ruthless, everything else is secondary or of no importance to these people they’re class supremacists, not so ideological.
    What did Jesus say on the matter?
    ‘Where your treasure is, that’s where your heart is’.
    And so all these billionaires; Gates, Koch, Murdoch, Musk, Soros, Trump, they’re all the same and control both sides of the aisle through bribery and various other sordid means, whatever it takes.

    Once you get that it all makes sense.
    It’s a uniparty, both its compartments are loyal to their donors, not to their constituents or ideologues.
    The one exception here in my opinion may be Israel, I believe some members of our ruling class, some of the Jewish ones who hold the lion’s share of the money and power deeply care about Israel.
    Both sides always seem to get shit down when it comes to helping Israel.

    • The Reukes are the guys who never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Some seem to think this foolishness or a bug of some kind. Even old Rev. Dabney knew better just after the War of Northern Aggression in 1870. This behavior is no bug or accident. It’s a feature – what the Repukes are designed to do.

  8. But you gotta give your constituents something once in a while, just enough to keep them loyal while you make excuses for your many failings, hence the protectionism.

  9. “We just need to do something about unions that make our workforces less attractive to employ. Being a leftist outfit, the unions are yet another branch of the left that’s destroying the West generally”:

    You have that backwards. Labour unions in the U.S. and its satellites are RIGHT-wing FAKE unions now, union leadership fully integrated with the corporations and the capitalist state, being only nominally “of, by and for” the workers now.

    Not just some workers but ALL workers need to become organised against the exploiters, and the means of production must be taken from private ownership and nationalised. Government must also be taken from the control of the elites, and become truly of, by and for the people. None of that can be accomplished by voting!

    “When you have local manufacturing, you have economic security and sovereignty. You don’t want to be relying on China for everything from trucks to cutlery. What if there’s a major political rift between China and America and they decide to cut off supplies?”:

    I say it’s better to buy Red Chinese products now, than to buy from (be bled by) the Western corporate elites. “Buy American” is a scam and a very heavy hidden tax on workers. For example: The U.S. will not allow you to buy a Chinese electric car that is actually superiour to Tesla for less than one third the price, that meets all the U.S. safety requirements and is only being blocked to subsidise Elon Musk and to try to harm China (sanctions, tariffs and import bans are part of the hybrid war on Chinese socialism, along with psychological warfare, arming the Taiwan province, and assembling an anti-China military coalition including Philippines, Australia and New Zealand, pursuing regime change in Myanmar, Bangladesh and Thailand, and efforts to stir up Muslim anti-Chinese aggression in Central Asia.

    • The Chinese are investing a lot of money in Xinjiang. The Chinese are thinking prosperity will make the Uyghurs forget about independence.

Comments are closed.