Treasury Secretary Bessent cautioned last month that Americans  will likely experience “a detox period” after President Trump implements his wide-ranging tariffs.

What are we detoxing from, exactly? 

From an abundance of affordable goods and the world’s highest living standards? From consistent economic growth? From leading the world in nearly every possible innovation and quantifiable economic measurement? From being an evolving manufacturing powerhouse? From enjoying an unprecedented per capita GDP or the low unemployment rates?

The Trump administration suffers from Munchausen syndrome by tariff, prescribing toxic cures for mythical ailments to gain attention.

That’s something to remember as Mr. Trump celebrates “Liberation Day” this week, promising to free us from the tyranny of affordable car parts, oil, produce, computers, phones, and furniture, among thousands of other products. 

Mr. Trump’s flighty trade guru, Peter Navarro, contends that America is going to raise $6 trillion in revenue via tariffs on foreign goods over the next ten years. He also says tariffs are a “tax cut,” which makes about as much sense as former President Biden telling us that dumping trillions into the economy would do wonders in fighting inflation.

Biden-era Democrats believed “transitory” inflation was worth suffering through in order to “remake” the economy. Trump officials are now making the same terrible bet on transitory economic pain.

And it’s impossible for a voter to keep up with the MAGA reasoning for tariffs. One day, trade wars are merely a means of finding fairness. The next day, tariffs are going to replace the income tax and build a complete “self-sufficiency” utopia where people will once again be paid big bucks for assembling widgets in factories.

Mr. Trump did promise voters he would deal with the trade deficit and stop countries from “ripping us off,” which is like accusing your local supermarket cashier of robbing you when you buy groceries. 

Are all international trade deals “fair”? Of course not. If things were fair in this world, we’d be in big trouble. Just look at a list of nations with high trade barriers and those without them. The ones that are low are virtually all wealthy, and vice versa.

According to protectionists like Vice President Vance, the public is the victim of stagnant wages and a lack of good jobs due to “deindustrialization.” Not only is manufacturing output at historic highs right now, but real annual family income has spiked $28,000 since NAFTA was enacted, while overall wealth rose close to 500 percent, outpacing inflation five times over that time. 

The American per capita income over the past ten years is unrivaled. The middle class has only shrunk because of the growth of the upper middle class.

Tariffs are meant to prop up a small number of antiquated union jobs in the Rust Belt at the expense of millions of others. We’re not “bringing back” manufacturing jobs lost to automation, which is most of them. And we already have plenty of high-tech, high-paying jobs. For every Rust Belt town that struggles, a new wealthy suburb in Texas, Nevada, or Florida continues to grow. Those voters may not be as accommodating to the administration if its technocratic adventures start tanking 401(k)s.

It should not be this way. Over many decades, Congress has incrementally handed over “emergency” and tariff power to the president. There’s simply no model of the constitutional order that foresaw the executive unilaterally installing economic policy or taxing citizens without legislation. Courts are constantly intervening when Mr. Trump acts in ways that fall under his executive purview. And yet, no one stops him from enacting tariffs, a clear violation of Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.

In a healthy republic, we would have a debate on how to implement economic policy. A federal legislature would represent the needs of its districts, states, and the country. Our relative stability relies on checks on power. In this case, the entire economy hangs on the daily whims of one man.

One suspects that memories of a strong pre-Covid economy helped Mr. Trump win in 2024. That success was predicated on free market deregulation and tax cuts, not a statist remaking of the economy. Polls show about 60 percent of people are already concerned about how the president is handling tariffs. A recent Fox News poll found that 69 percent — correctly — believe that tariffs will make products more expensive. Protectionism isn’t as popular as MAGA believes. 

And should the economy backslide into stagflation or a recession, it won’t be difficult to figure out who to blame.

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