I'm more of an economic liberal than most here. I believe in free trade. And believe in a liberal guest worker program for foreigners. But still, you've got to agree that Trump's tariffs and deportations were poorly planned.
The tariffs on Mexico and Canada are a good example. Trump came up with a good way to decimate the United States auto industry, along with Canada's and Mexico's, although admittedly he's delayed implementing it.
If you believe what Trump's trying to accomplish is positive, you should nevertheless recognize that he should have phased in the tariffs over a much longer period of time. That would give American industry the time to build the factories and such that will be required to replace imports. And would have lessened the effect on prices. And helped our exporters, some of whom will go out of business because they won't be able to compete since they have to pay more for steel, aluminum, etc.
He should have gone through Congress and passed bipartisan legislation, so the next administration won't overturn the executive orders he's using to implement the tariffs. And IMO, although probably not his, the tariffs should have preferentially targeted products that are important to produce domestically. And that wouldn't just result in, say, production moving from China to Vietnam. Processing rare earth ore here in the USA would be a great example of what we should do.
The tariffs are going to cause prices of certain products to take a step up. Will that result in inflation? Will we go into some kind of wage price spiral?
Well, given the deportations that are going on too, maybe so. Here's an enlightening article from the NYT today,
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/09/b...ion-fears.html
A high percentage of workers in agriculture, health care and construction are undocumented, and they're afraid to go to work. Many are going to start being shipped home, or go voluntarily.
Trump should have promoted bipartisan legislation to convert illegals to legal guest workers. In the process, we could have deported the criminals and let the good people stay on.
Unemployment right now is sitting a little over 4%, and even with displaced federal workers, there won't be a big pool of people looking for jobs. If you get rid of the illegals, who's going to take care of sick, elderly Americans? Work in the fields and meat packing plants? And how about all those new, relatively unskilled jobs that will come our way as a result of the tariffs? That sounds like a recipe for wage price inflation.
And a recipe to make Americans poorer. There will be a shift to lower skilled labor. We'll allocate more labor of American citizens to cleaning bed pans and less to tech, high end manufacturing, etc. The things that we do best.
Trump should stop shooting from the hip and think first.
Make America Poor Again. And while you're at it, jack up inflation.
