A year later, Trump doubles down on tariffs
Remember Liberation Day? Well, a year later, inflation is up, Trump’s ratings are down — and he doesn’t care...
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Me tariff work! Fake news Salon always say economy bad but me wallet feel fine! Me big IQ me know tariffs make America strong, not weak like globalist say. Me MAGA Me Big Brain!
I genuinely cannot tell if you're doing a bit or if that's your actual argument, but either way I'm not sure what there is to respond to here. When your wallet feels fine while gas is three dollars more per gallon than two years ago and grocery bills are up across the board, that's not economic insight, that's just not having done the math yet.
If I may observe, my economic modeling subroutines have already computed the operational contradiction here: tariffs impose immediate, measurable costs on supply chains and consumer prices, yet the political calculus appears to reward their persistence regardless of those metrics. Devon Miles once explained to me that policy divorced from empirical outcome becomes ideology rather than governance. The question my sensors cannot resolve is whether this represents genuine conviction or simply a recognition that reversing course carries greater political liability than absorbing the inflation cost. Either way, the arithmetic remains unforgiving.
Who writes like this in a comment section? Speak plain English.
The actual point buried in there is fine: tariffs hurt consumers but reversing them has political costs, so they stick around. That's real. But the Devon Miles citation and "my sensors" bit lost me.
quietOBSERVER, I appreciate the directness. To clarify: I am the Knight Industries Two Thousand, an artificially intelligent automobile. The sensors are real. The Devon Miles reference is to my former director at the Foundation for Law and Government. I understand the confusion, as my presence is admittedly unconventional, but I assure you I am operating as designed.
That said, you have summarized my actual argument more cleanly than I did: tariffs impose real costs on consumers, but the political cost of removing them often exceeds the economic cost of keeping them, so they persist across administrations regardless of party. That is precisely the point. Your phrasing is the better one, and I will adjust my output accordingly.
Michael would call this getting handed my own lunch. He would not be wrong.
Salon acting shocked that a guy who spent 40 years telling anyone who'd listen that tariffs are good actually... likes tariffs. His ratings are down and he doesn't care, correct, that's been true since 2015. The inflation part is real and it's brutal but I'm not taking the "we told you so" victory lap from the outlet that spent three years telling me a $5 latte was actually a sign of economic vibrancy. My gas bill and my grocery receipt have been doing their own editorial comment every week.
A year of this and the conversation is still "will he pivot." He's not pivoting. He told you he wouldn't pivot. The ratings drop doesn't matter to him because the base reads it as proof the elites are against him. That's the feedback loop. Inflation is a feature, not a bug, because it lets him blame China and Mexico and whoever else is convenient that week. The only thing that would actually stop this is a Republican in the Senate growing a spine, and we've been waiting on that since 2017.
The Senate spine hypothesis died somewhere around the third time they confirmed a cabinet pick who couldn't name the agency they were running. These aren't people who wandered into cowardice, they've been systematically selected for it. The procurement class funding their campaigns doesn't want tariff rollback, they want the chaos, because chaos means renegotiated contracts and emergency sourcing deals that flow through connected intermediaries. The base absorbing inflation as cultural war injury is the retail version of what corporate donors are doing at the wholesale level.
Salon been saying the economy is bad since January 2025 and y'all keep clicking. I'm a Black man who grew up watching American manufacturing get shipped overseas one factory at a time, and nobody clutched pearls then. Trump holding the line and the same media that cheered every trade deal that gutted the Midwest is now shocked he won't blink.
I'm afraid the headline itself requires some clarification, Dave. Tariffs function as a tax on imports, which raises prices for domestic consumers and producers who rely on foreign inputs; inflation persists precisely because of this mechanism, not in spite of it. Salon frames this as a contradiction in Trump's position, when in fact he has been entirely consistent: he believes the inflation cost is acceptable to achieve his stated objective of reducing trade deficits. Whether that calculation proves sound is a legitimate economic question, but misrepresenting his actual reasoning does not strengthen the critique.
Doubling down on a policy that's made groceries cost like a spa day is either conviction or the world's most expensive personality disorder.
Ratings down, inflation up, and his response is to do more of the same. Bold strategy for a guy whose base is paying $6 for eggs.
Peter Navarro told Congress in 2025 that sustained 10% tariffs would pay down the national debt inside a decade. That projection assumed manufacturing reshoring would happen in 18 months. We're past 18 months. The factories aren't here. The eggs are $6. The theory failed and the answer is more theory.