President Trump has made one intention very clear, that being that he will be working to restore the United States' industrial base. He's been taking steps to do that, and many of those steps have involved tariffs intended to balance trade. This effort has culminated (so far) with the April 2nd "Liberation Day" reciprocal tariffs. Democrats and even some Republicans are opposing the tariffs, but one administration member, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, went on record on Friday in support of the president's plans. //

Granted, tariffs make many uncomfortable, and that discomfort is not limited to the left; free-trade advocates on the right are concerned as well. But, as President Trump points out, free trade has to work both ways, and many nations have heavy tariffs on American goods.

The free-market advocate website Issues & Insights is a little more cautious on the matter, but they are not ruling out the idea that the tariffs may have the desired effect. //

If Trump’s approach works better than all those trade deals at bringing down other nations’ tariffs, who can complain? Certainly not free traders.

You don't get much more free trader than I&I's editorial board. //

The thing is, we're in terra incognita here. The United States has not tried a major tariff reset since Smoot-Hawley in 1930. And, despite what you will hear in some quarters, the Smoot-Hawley tariffs didn't cause the Depression; the market crash that led to that financial disaster happened in 1929. No less an economist than Milton Friedman opined that the effect Smoot-Hawley had on the Depression was minimal. What's more, the global economy is vastly different now than it was in 1930. Britain, in 1930, had the world's largest and most powerful navy on the planet and a powerful industrial base, while the United States was still moving from being a predominantly agricultural economy to an industrialized one - and only ten years later, we would be the "arsenal of democracy." Japan was the primary power in Asia, militarily and economically, while China was an agricultural country mired in what we would now call the third world.

Much has changed since then. //

anon-9s7n
3 hours ago edited
Trump has been right about pretty much everything so far. The status quo of being a services economy (that is pretty easy to compete against given our woeful status of education) is not acceptable to anyone with a functioning cranium. We have to incentivize manufacturing in this country and not one single person at any level of the public square has come up with a better way than this.

All the detractors need to clamp their pie holes shut until they can come up with a detailed, multi-year strategy to achieve the same end of bringing manufacturing back to this country.

I'm far more interested in FAIR trade than free trade. Free trade just means giving other nations a free ride on the back of Americans. Enough! //

Eric R EDMUND
an hour ago
There were 10% drops twice in 2024 with no tariffs and a Dem in the White House, no one panicked, almost no one even noticed. The markets will recover quickly enough and if the number of people working has increased in the mean time, it will based on healthier fundamentals. //