This is a slam dunk situation for the Democrats but the only reason they will not be able to take full advantage of this situation is because they share the retarded beliefs of Bernie and AOC (it’s been a few days and not a peep from that socialist moron) and not in economic and social liberalism like classical liberals do. The country is fucked because the popular active politicians on both sides are complete idiots when it comes to economic policies. It’s up to centrists on both sides to blast both sides and bring the country back from the brink.
Yep. I worry that the free-market constituency is insignificant electorally. It's sad to me that, with all the hate on tariffs lately, no one attacks them from a simple liberty perspective.
??? Bernie and AOC are pretty much bog standard european-style social democrats. Are the governments of Northern Europe run by morons? They seem pretty fnctional.
More progressive income tax rates and national health care would not exactly turn the US into a dystopia, enacted 20 years ago they would have made Trump less likely.
No, they're not. Unlike the morons Bernie and AOC, European style social Democrats fund their national health care systems and other programs with heavy taxes on the middle class. If Democrats are willing to run on that and win, I may be personally against it but I'll accept it. The reason they keep talking about taxing the rich is because they know that taxing the middle class is a losing proposition. I personally don't want a national health care system because most national health care systems suck. Also, I would like US to be rich and not poor like most European countries.
Do you prefer US healthcare to French system? I am with you on the need to tax middle class to achieve that, but France seems to have way better system (and outcomes) than US.
There are tradeoffs but I would prefer the US healthcare system because of shorter wait times. When people are comparing outcomes, they usually mean life expectancy and life expectancy in the US is not worse because of health care. It's because of worse health, murders, car accidents & drug overdoses. None of those are fixed by a better healthcare system. I know that a lot of Americans think that life in EU is better but most immigrants from Asia, Africa and South America prefer moving to the US instead of EU. That should tell you something.
The people I know in France don’t express concerns about long wait times. Single payer systems have that problem but countries like France and Germany have more blended approach, which seems better. They provide a floor but not a ceiling (for people who want to spend more for more/faster/better care.
I understand part of your point about drug overdoses, murders/homicides/suicide rate, etc. But poor health. You don’t think healthcare system/capacity has anything to do with the actual health of the population? If that is true, why have a health system at all?
> You don’t think healthcare system/capacity has anything to do with the actual health of the population? If that is true, why have a health system at all?
I don't. It's an individual's responsibility to exercise and eat well when they become adults. The purpose of the healthcare system is the same as it's been before there was allopathy - to treat sick people. I was skinny when I was in India and am fat after living in the US. I don't think the difference is down to the quality of healthcare but my age and personal habits.
I'm sorry but your empty generalisations betray your ignorance of either the politics of Europe or the US. Do you think the idiosyncratic US health care system, or it's idiosyncratic laws for political campaign finance are to do with cultural preferences of US votes? Can you explain that? Can you explain how the popularity of Front Nationale in France is about something other than rightwing social and cultural preferences of a significant subset of the French public ?
Lol. That's not true. Except for issues like health care where the US is the single outlier like campaign finance or health care. To the extent that I don't think it makes sense to say these are 'rightwing' views.
The left/right divide in the US is mainly based on social and cultural issues and almost every party in EU is to the left of center in the US in that aspect. Republican voters love Social Security and Medicare.
Totally agree. Can anyone figure out how to be the party with 65-70% margins and not 51-49%? Centrists unite! You have nothing to lose but the wing-nuts in both parties.
This is dumb. Trump is in office because huge swaths of the electorate is unhappy with unrestricted free trade that doesn't have any corresponding benefit to workers who lose their jobs. Trump is an idiot, obviously, and his medicine is the equivalent of injecting bleach into your body. But that doesn't mean "become reflexive defenders of a bad status quo" is the right move, either.
Politically the right move is just to point out the bleach.
I think trade has been very beneficial to US citizens in terms of raising the standards of living and allowing the US economy to grow faster than EU. The average American is richer and leads a more luxurious lifestyle compared to the average European. Politically, the right move is to tax the large percentage of winners and pay off the small percentage of losers instead of lowering the standards of living for everyone.
I think Noah's position on this before today was a pretty good one. We need to use targeted trade restrictions and investments to rebuild some critical domestic industries, particularly semiconductors and energy. That's more or less what Biden was doing before Trump was elected, and Noah was very positive about it (in the past.) I worry that this nuanced language will devolve into some kind of "unrestricted pro-free-trade is always best" overreaction, and that this will be both bad policy *and* bad politics.
Unrestricted free trade is always the best, even though exceptions may need to be made for national security reasons. Protectionism for domestic industries is a pretty bad reason to add tariffs. There was no reason to add tariffs for EV cars, batteries and solar cells if you care about an abundance of green energy.
The ability to manufacture batteries, solar cells and semiconductors is vital for national security. So is the ability to build cars and other heavy industrial machines. If you don't have the industrial base to build those things, you've already lost the next major war.
You can make strategic investments or subsidize these industries for defense purposes without requiring the corresponding tariffs for the consumer sector, where EV cars from BYD or batteries or solar cells are not a national security issue.
I think the best way to think about this is a counter factual: EU decides that software and internet services is a critical industry and slaps massive services tariffs on all US tech companies (Google/Meta/Amazon/etc) that currently dominate the global market. Or pick your favorite other dominant US industry where the US has a surplus. Does the US say, yep, fair point, or do we scream bloody murder? Is our argument that we just deserve to protect all our favored industries? Can’t every country decide to do the same thing? If you can’t compete…figure out a way to compete, or fight on different terrain. Nat security/environmental externalities is a good argument, but the real problem is China. So you build an anti-dumping coalition. Not shred your allies with tariffs. P.s. look at US internal migration. People and jobs move to where it is easiest/cheapest to innovate and build. If you think these tariffs are good, you also should believe in Michigan slapping tariffs on cars made in South Carolina. Or the Northeast states slapping tariffs on anything made in the South. The US has been a huge trade winner. Just not in every sector, and we can do a lot better in training, infrastructure, education, etc.
Agree again. The problem is that we have also made it too difficult and expensive to invest in infrastructure and housing to allow workers to relocate to faster growing regions. And our education system is geared to 4 year college and advanced graduates and not to vocational training for high paying technical jobs that could be the base for more small and large scale manufacturing. In other words, have a competitiveness strategy geared around jobs for the people who aren’t in the knowledge class, who are mostly low and middle class. Build more rungs in the economic ladder for the people and communities most impacted by lower wage competition from abroad.
So far, from my transatlantic point of view, I thought the unexpected quietness of the Dems was either due to a) leaderlessnes or b) the tactical reasoning to show people what they voted for.
Noah saying c) Dem sympathies for tariffs might be a part of it really came as a surprise.
The manufacturing unions are loving the tariffs. The policy is so obviously popular with the working class base the dems aspire to be representative of. Making liberal economic arguments about why taxes are bad for growth and growth is important etc etc is just not their comfort zone at all. They prepared speeches about why Trump cutting taxes was bad and are on the back foot now. They are accustomed to blasting Trump's vile racism/xenophobia/greed/whatever. Here, he is making a very well-intentioned policy mistake due to errors in economic reasoning. They are more focused on a handful of deportations of non-citizens that are awful, but insignificant to most Americans. They are similarly focused on DOGE spending and staffing cuts. They can't associate a bad intention with the tariffs like they can for the above things. They still think they can gain power by convincing voters Trump is a bad man. They would like to point to the increase in manufacturing employment under Biden, to suggest their approach was working and Trump is wrong, but there was no such increase. Oh well.
- Tariffs are not popular with the working class base, you think they are? Have you checked the polling lately?
- Taxes are bad for growth? (you think a nation with no taxes would succeed?)
- Trump imposes the biggest tax rise in history and that puts opposition politicians on their back foot?
- Trump isn't vile & racist & xenophobic & greedy? Those tiresome truth tellers.
- Trump's tariffs are well-intentioned? Well-intentioned economic warfare on our closest allies? Do tell.
- Those foolish do-gooders, so concerned that people are being disappeared without due process. Can't they wake up and see no one cares?
- Cancer research is gutted, scientific R&D cancelled, those silly people who think that matters.
- ("They can't associate a bad intention with the tariffs like they can for the above things.) Unintelligible.
- Straw man. Who thinks they can gain power by convincing people Trump is bad? No, we gain power because Trump is a disaster for the nation.
- Factory building and manufacturing capital investment were way up under Biden, the approach was working, you avoid this by making it all about manufacturing employment, which, by the way, was up under Biden. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP
Can you be any wronger? A bizaare mix of the obtuse and the untrue, and the spooky (sneering at those who care about the rule of law)
I'm anti-Trump, and that's why I share Noah's disappointment with the Democrats with respect to their messaging on Trump's tariff policy.
I just see you reading me fabulously uncharitably throughout. For instance:
"Taxes are bad for growth? (you think a nation with no taxes would succeed?)"
No, I don't think that. You are just reading concise writing profoundly uncharitably. People that criticize new, large tax programs from an economic growth perspective are rarely advocating for a minarchist zero-tax regime. Straw man. They, and I, are just pointing out that we already have a lot of tax and policymakers should think in a sober way about the growth consequences of taxation. Biden's corporate tax increases were not presented by MSM or Demorcatic policymakers as having any growth consequences whatsoever, for example. Complete denial of tradeoffs in the area of taxation.
So I am pointing out that the Dems own bad policy framings have hindered their ability to fully capitalize on Trump's disaster, which is sad for me as a Democrat. So yes, I say that Dems have put themselves into a position where it is uncomfortable for them to criticize the growth consequences of tax increases. Then you just caricature me as endorsing zero taxes. Absurd.
"Trump isn't vile & racist & xenophobic & greedy? Those tiresome truth tellers."
More caricaturing of my position by profoundly uncharitable reading of concise writing. Trump is a uniquely despicable individual in our political landscape and should be called out for that. What is disappointing for me, as a Democrat, is that, even as it became clear that voters were fed up enough with Democrat's policies to elect Trump *despite* his character, Democrats refused to seriously re-consider the policies that were making them so unpopular. They were so invested in Trump just being too evil to vote for.
Now, faced with a well-intentioned Policy blunder by Trump, Dems are caught flat-footed because they completely bungled their opportunity to address the concerns Trump claims to be addressing. Their own budget-busting everything bagel subsidies programs and giveaways to unions stunk, so they can't just criticize Trump's massively delusional policy intervention. No, they are just quibbling on the details.
All of your bullet points are exactly this. Reading me as not seeing Trump's failures as failures. Not so. What I want is a party that unapologetically endorses free trade and has humility about large scale government interventions in the macroeconomy. The Democrats are not that, at all, and that hurts them when in power, as we've seen, and also when they are the opposition, as we are seeing.
I re-read your post, and it is a rant. Rants do not make fine distinctions not because they are concise, but because they come from anger. Nuance has been left behind. That your anger is pitched at Democrats is telling.
"Biden's corporate tax increases" That is not concision, it is wrong. Biden proposed a corporate tax increase from 21 to 28%. It did not go into law. Centering anger against Democrats for a modest proposed tax increase that did not pass while Trump is destroying the world economy is at a minimum, strange.
Your prescription for the Democrats "a party that unapologetically endorses free trade and has humility about large scale government interventions in the macroeconomy." undoubtedly reflects your personal politics, but there is zero evidence the Democrats lost for those reasons. A lack of avidity for untrammeled free trade! Resurrect neo-liberalism! Your analysis is original, Ill give you that.
Here are some meat and potatoes explanations: Biden was too loose on the border. Biden was too old, he needed to step aside so the Democrats could run a real primary. Harris failed to stake out distance between herself and Biden. "Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you" was effective, not responding was a mistake. It was a terrible year for incumbents worldwide. Take your pick. All pretty persuasive!
I'll agree that Democrats are not all rising to the opccasion, but it isn't because they shot themselves in the foot under Biden by not channeling 1992 DNC talking points. Every Democrats is well-positioned to tell the truth: The corrupt and stupid Trump is blowing up the economy because he is corrupt and stupid.
In the medium to long term, the detention and deporting of tourists and green card holders is going to have a far bigger effect on Americans than the tariffs.
Well, the lefties were right, the shock from opening to China was immense, though it followed a few decades of opening to Japan and Korea on autos, steel, and shipbuilding. The loss of old-line manufacturing jobs was severe, and most of those workers never recovered their (high, union-aided) incomes. The Democrats never really capitalized on that, largely because they had shifted their center of power to the knowledge workers, and the conflict with the working class on "social" issues was strong. But the Democrats are still intrinsically suspicious of markets and want to micro-manage the economy. Then again, that manufacturing proletariat class is shrinking steadily so it's not going to be a place to get lots of votes, however all this turns out.
Good point the Dem party doesn't really have a leader or demagogue to rally around like Trump has become for them the past decades. That is one reason messaging is all over the place, in addition to the fact that the current media environment isn't suited for long format takes.
I think you are cherry picking Dem comments a bit to build a narrative of Democrats missing the moment. The comments below counter that narrative.
Charles Schumer on April 3: "Donald Trump's tariffs are the largest tax hike on families since World War II. And of course markets are plunging. Donald Trump is singlehandedly tanking the markets."
Mark Kelly on April 3: "Trump claims that his auto tariffs will promote car manufacturing in America. Instead, people are losing their jobs, prices are going to skyrocket, and American families are going to foot the bill."
Mark Kelly on April 2: "Today is Donald Trump’s "Liberation Day." But what exactly is he liberating Americans from, our savings and 401Ks? His tariffs are going to be a giant tax on American families, raising the price of groceries, housing, cars, and so much more."
Amy Klobuchar on April 6: "The Trump tariff tax is the largest tax increase since 1968. It will increase costs by thousands of dollars per family. @SenSchumer and I introduced an amendment Friday night to rescind these taxes if the price of everyday goods increases.
Senate Republicans voted it down."
Also, am I dreaming, or didn't Kamala Harris hammer Trump repeatedly during the 2024 campaign about how American consumers would suffer economically if Trump's tariff proposals were implemented?
Once again Noah has identified the root cause of our problems...Democrats!
His headline is typical of his narrative. In it trump as the agency of fire!
Over and over Noah resolves the republicans and Magas of their responsibility and manages to blame Dems and libs for either causing the repubs to be they way they are, or not doing anything to stop them. It's Crazy.
"After this is all over, if Americans decide that “anti-neoliberalism” means tariffs, they will build effigies of Milton Friedman in their front yards."
Shouldn't that be idol instead of effigy, as in they would praise the figure, not burn it? 😛
Reshoring manufacturing to America assumes there’s a large cohort of unemployed workers with the fitness, skills and desire to work in factories. Is there? 18% of Americans are 65+. Meanwhile the median age in Vietnam is 33.
Skills and education? China STEM graduates exceed 3.57 million annually (40% of graduates).
U.S. graduates 584K STEM annually (20% of graduates).
Fitness? 40% of Americans are obese. Opioid addiction is rampant. And many cannot access or afford basic health care. US life expectancy is 77.5 years. Canada’s 81.3, Japan 84.5.
Highly paid unionized auto manufacturing jobs are the exception, not the rule. Bottom line: are Americans willing to work making shoes and garments for minimum wage?
BUT, since we're a bunch of eggheads here, it would be interesting to discuss free trade, immigration, unions/labor and the seething rage that seems to animate many Americans.
First, there was Japan. Then NAFTA. Then the China Shock. Then the 2008 crisis. I'll leave COVID and its aftermath (inflation etc) asides as it's not man-made.
Is labor always wrong to worry about intl' trade and immigration as ways to keep domestic labor subdued? It's also okay to point out we've adapted to Japan, NAFTA, China, 2008 etc. but
1- are we sure those deaths of despair and heartland misery are all fake?
2- are we sure that the alt-right is powered solely by racial/sexual resentment and social status games? like, nothing to do with economic malaise at all?
3- are we sure as to what happened to all those blue collar workers in the new economy? did they all really become baristas, gym teachers and sandwich makers?
I don't have determined answers here. I certainly believe that the transition away from mass manufacturing employment could have been managed better (and make greater use of automation within developed economies given the benefits of industrial clusters/jobs associated with industrial production like R&D etc) but I'm well aware that, on paper, the US economy is the envy of the world.
I'm also constantly puzzled by stories of "median Americans are wealthy beyond belief" (as Noah states constantly) and "top 10% of Americans are doing 50% of the spending"... I fully understand wealth can be measured both absolutely and relatively but it's a bit strange to have so many seething with rage if their economic situation was one of quiet satiation...
I'd be interested to see how structurally different the type of employment/the economic structure is between the USA of today and, say, the ideal of Danemark/Sweden (Norway doesn't count given their oil reserves).
"and make greater use of automation within developed economies given the benefits of industrial clusters/jobs associated with industrial production like R&D etc)"
Not sure what you mean here. American manufacturing output levels never stopped increasing. What happened is that our share of global manufacturing output declined and employment in the sector declined. Increasing output while decreasing employment was only possible due to huge productivity increases and automation is a big part of that story.
On your broader comment...
It's better to pursue growth and then redistribute than to try to achieve mythical equal growth. Worrying about unequal growth leads to market-killing policies and not growing. Despite what you might've heard, we have been increasing social spending outlays as a percentage of gdp quite steadily for a *very* long time, including in recent decades.
The reason it doesn't *feel* that way to people is that the costs of housing / education / healthcare have grown too fast and the population has aged so that the worker:retiree ratio has declined a lot. These are issues, to be sure, but they aren't international trade or immigration related. Protectionism would make the cost issues even worse here.
It seems like the labor class you speak of has rejected the idea of redistribution as a corrective to unequal growth. Not for the usual leftist reason- denial that redistribution is adequate or occurring at all. More "I want a job not a handout, I want dignity"-type rhetoric. That's not really an *economic* viewpoint, so that's a problem for the whole grow and redistribute project.
People don't like losing entitlement once they have them, but it seems rare for working class folks to demand handouts in American in 2025. That seems more like something well-educated, affluent leftists clamor for, as a kind of moral grandstanding. I just see it as the least bad way to reconcile economic growth (never equal) and democracy (always demanding equality). Cracks appearing, definitely.
on the automation thing. I find it common to see like a TikTok video of some robot with some caption like "Japan/China/Korea/whomever has these super robots building things! we're screwed!"
Look at actual value-add per manufacturing worker and you'll see how on-another-level the US is there. We aren't #2 in manufacturing output (despite huge cost disadvantages) for nothing. Productivity in the US manufacturing sector is world-beating and the entire point of automation is productivity. Don't think in terms of "how much robots" or TikTok vids. Look at productivity stats. That's what matters.
Well said. Seems to me that the US weathered the shift to globalism as well or better than any developed nation. Looking at growth rates, median wages, inflation, unemployment, GDP, global competitiveness, tech capitalization or whatever.
If Trump actually uses this as a lever to lower global tariffs then he will be a hero. I am very doubtful though. Everything I have ever seen him do or say shouts out “idiot”.
One big problem I have with Trump/Miran and this whole overvalued USD / unfair trading obsession is that we've seen de-industrialization (defined as decreasing manufacturing share of output and employment) consistently across rich countries. That's true even with more protectionist policies than ours, or a non-USD currency.
Low trade barriers and labor cost differentials are fully adequate to explain declining manufacturing employment in rich countries. No need to posit unfair trading practices (true possible RE: China but ridiculous vis a vis Canada, EU, etc.) or a grand macro fx theory.
US is doing just fine under globalization. Unfortunately, demagoguery sells. The US has absolutely zero need to create jobs. Jobs are readily available for those that want to work and the pay is excellent by any global standard. All that matters here is productivity growth and these tariff policies create windfall profits in the short-term for certain domestic producers, while actively harming the prospects for productivity growth that would drive long-run prosperity.
My theory is the heartland malaise is really just a downstream effect of the Sackler family inflicting an opioid epidemic on rural America. Everything’s going to feel a little worse when you know drugged out zombies, it’s not just a thing that happens in the inner city.
Otherwise, that same rural America “struggling” so severely has quite a few people with $50,000 boats they can cruise around in every summer weekend flying some bizarre Trump flag (Visit any midwestern pond in July).
Let’s see how they maintain those boats in the recession, with all parts twice as much.
I think it’s very telling when people single out the Sackler family and entirely ignore the role of the FDA, physicians, “harm-reduction” local politics, synthetic drug innovation, and even cultural factors.
Like yeah, there was unethical behavior at Purdue, but our healthcare system is not supposed to rely on the goodwill of pharma firms. The FDA is supposed to block dangerous drugs. Physicians are supposed to understand what they are prescribing, etc.
Ultimately $2 fentanyl pills are a technological innovation, substituting for a $20 heroin bag. The manufacturing process is easy to hide relative to agricultural operations to grow poppy or coca. These tech innovations in the black market were not causes by any institutions in the US.
Also, I know it's pretty much taken as a proven fact that over prescribing pain pills caused the heroin epidemic, the actual evidence for it is extremely weak. Heroine use was on the up swing before it entered the market. And outside of anecdotes, there's not a lot of evidence to support the 'got addicted to pain pills, switched to heroine.'
Simple minds can't resist heaping blame on a wealthy Jewish family. I don't want to dismiss that the company acted unethically, even illegally, but to attribute all this suffering to this drug company that merely marketed a higher-dose time-release version of Oxycodone, a drug that had been around forever, is just silly. There is hardly any difference between abusing Percocet and abusing Oxycontin. The doc prescribes the same daily dose, the Oxycontin is just fewer pills. No reason you can't pop four Percs and get the same effects as the one Oxycontin pill.
Ever since 2016 we’ve been hearing about these poor left behind people as a way to explain Trump’s support. Most of the Trump supporters I know are upper middle class people with good jobs, nice homes and vehicles. I’ve always said most of his support is due to cultural issues, not economic.
> 3- are we sure as to what happened to all those blue collar workers in the new economy? did they all really become baristas, gym teachers and sandwich makers?
No, actually a lot of them end up on disability and are excluded from unemployment statistics. Over 5% of working age adults in America are now on disability even though the vast majority are physically able to work. It's what we do with long term unemployed to hide the insanity of the system from the general public.
It’s true that fake disability is an increasing and chronic problem but it is not at all true that the unemployment rate is pushed deceptively. Yellen famously pointed often at other stats like the employment-population ratio to argue that there was more labor market slack than suggested by unemployment.
Yes, Janet Yellen knows it and I know it because I know how the numbers are calculated. But it is hidden from the general public who will hear exactly one number - "the unemployment rate is X%" and that's it. Thus the politically expedient solution is generally unknown to the voting public. Nobody is technically lying, but the numbers are calculated in a way to make them mean something very different than what their name indicates. I call that deceptive.
Those demonstrations might have been cathartic, but I challenge you to identify a single coherent message coming out it--one which could actually give direction to action. What, "no kings!"? Sounds like a line from a Rush song and is just as empty and irrelevant to the moment. The Dems are simultaneously utterly directionless and spastic--a bad combination. "Do something!" is the politics of tantrum. Before they can *do* anything, in any kind of coherent and concentrated manner, they need to first figure out who they are--because they haven't a clue and, worse, the voting public doesn't either. To the average voter the Dems just look like a hodge-podge of deeply unpopular cultural and identitarian boutique issues.
"Trump is a bad leader who is hurting America" was the unifying message. Now his bad leadership is wiping out people's 401(k)s and soon it'll be taking away their jobs. At some level, when leadership is this bad you don't need a policy document, you don't *want* a policy document. You need a growing mass-movement that makes it obvious (to voters, Congress and other institutions in our society) that Trump isn't an all-powerful, scary, popular leader.
OWS raised awareness about wealth inequality but didn’t have a clear plan or any institutional support to address it. “Oppose and remove Trump from power because he’s hurting the country and might hurt you,” is a very clear plan and has gobs of institutional support.
Are you serious? What did you want? Riots? Some Djin to smack down stupid.
I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat. -Will Rogers
There were no rumbles in the streets. No rioting. That is what democracy looks like. Many had never been to a protest before. We are talking about people's livelihoods here, not Democrats vs. Republicans. For the record, I am a registered Republican. Though I didn't vote for stupid. Likely going to change that registration and join the disorganized. In fact, I will, as I type this, I resolve to make the trip to the commision today and change that.
"No Kings!" IS the message. The future leadership is undetermined but likely somewhere amid these protests. These tariffs are unlawful. These deportations are unlawful. The destruction of government agencies without congressional consent is unlawful. Impoundment is unlawful—a litany of unlawful acts are being perpetrated by an Executive gone, full-on King. Let's not start with the other unwise acts that endanger our future - defunding fundamental research that pays two dollars for every one dollar invested, and was vetted by the most vicious and competitive grant process in the world. Gone. Now forcing business leaders to restructure supply chains on a whim. No Kings! indeed. FDT.
If Chuck Schumer had stopped the continuing resolution, we might not have had to spend this past Saturday in the streets. You can't collect tariffs without Customs agents on the job. We might not have had to lose 10 Trillion dollars in capital assets. Just as likely, it would only have delayed the inevitable.
Change happens slowly sometimes. Other times, it is a tipping point. It is coming. The Democrats are blameless in this fire - Schumer made sure of that. The depths we are plumbing will call for a new remake of American policy and institutions. I hope the leaders rising sans Schumer and Sanders are up for the task.
Now, please excuse me while I go out and buy some dishes and underwear while I can.
This is a good question. I don't know. One day at a time. I'm appreciating some that I had previously discounted. I'm not interested in individuals at this point. I just want a functioning economy and local fire department and hospital (the last of which depending largely on medicaid and medicare functioning as intended.) There's no joy in outing Democrats these days. Certainly there are no clear answers.
No need to wait until 2026. Watch the Virginia governor's race; election is in November 2025. Abigail Spanberger is a moderate D, former US House member (didn't run for reelection to prepare 2025 race). She's strongly favored to win in this purple state. In prior election in 2021, over 3 MILLION votes cast. That's big. Plus DOGE layoffs have hit Virginia hard, putting elected Republicans in a bind: they fear Trump/Musk & MAGA voters, thus their response to laid-off constituents is weak (e.g., discounted adult education at the University of Virginia).
This seems like a mix of Democrats not commenting and Democrats not having adequate messaging platforms to comment with. Individual Democratic senators might have commented, but unless they have substantial personal social media followings they're shouting into the wind.
This is a self-inflicted problem to some extent. Part of being a politician in the modern era is building up your personal social media platform and farming engagement and living the influencer life. Information is heavily democratized now and Democrats have as many ways to get their message out as anyone.
But it's a real problem Democrats have and it makes this kind of thing much harder. Especially since institutions that would have served as key players in communicating the ideas of left-leaning elites (such as the mainstream media and universities) are all under direct assault from Trump for speaking out against the regime. Outside of actual campaign events, Democratic politicians have historically relied on these institutions to communicate their message indirectly, and now it's all being burned out from under them.
I do agree that Democrats aren't being nearly vocal enough with the platforms they do have, however. It really does feel like many of them aren't even trying.
The bigger problem Noah is identifying though is that several of the people with platforms are using them to try to claim that they are the real supporters of tariffs, and Trump is just doing them wrong.
I think Noah is right! But in a way, he almost understates the problem here. I think a lot of what's happening here is that we're now seeing the same dynamic with Democrats that we used to see with Republicans or businesspeople.
Imagine that you're a Democratic congressman with a few hundred social media followers. You can either post a milquetoast message about how Trump is bad and continue to have a few hundred followers, or you can post a controversial "Maybe Trump is right about some things" take and immediately be seen across national news for the controversy you'll create. Granted, a lot of the people will be spotlighting you as a source of hatred, but your follower count will shoot up and everyone will hear what you have to say. Whatever people think of what you said, you're now cemented in the public consciousness a Bold Truth Teller who goes against the grain.
This is a common dynamic with Trump. It's the dynamic that has allowed him to take over institution after institution. We live in an engagement-driven world, and he's so crazy that every individual in your institution always stands to farm the most engagement by finding a way to agree with him. It's a giant tragedy of the commons where agreeing with Trump becomes individually beneficial to their social media stats, their likes and follows. We've seen this happen previously with the Republican party, with the business community, and so on. Hundreds of reasonable people coming forward with engagement-farming posts. "Okay, I know he sounds crazy, but hear me out..." And one by one, the institutions fall.
This has proven to be an incredibly dangerous pattern for other institutions. It's a huge part of what's destroyed institution after institution, because it's very hard to fight against without top-down enforcement. You really need to have leadership that will call out what's happening and credibly punish defectors or this dynamic will shred your entire movement apart. It's why every organization that isn't explicitly anti-Trump drifts towards Trumpism over time.
Fighting this on a messaging level is going to require that the Democratic party accept a greater degree of top-down leadership than it has previously been willing to tolerate. It's not enough to hope that everyone organically opposes Trump and no one takes the bait - the incentive for individuals to defect is too great. People who defect don't even think they're defecting, they just think they're sticking to their beliefs and being bold truth-tellers.
The big question is whether the Democratic party is willing to accept getting their messaging from a top-down anti-fascist leader, and whether anyone is willing to step up and become that leader. Anything less, and we'll soon see a hundred Deluzio types tearing the coalition apart from within for their personal gain.
Curious… which institutions are you suggesting he is taking over? I can think of the three branches of government and Twitter. Are these what you had in mind, or are there others?
Yes. VAT. When I was in law school my tax law professor told me that Arch Conservatives (and he was pretty Conservative) hated VAT — not because it didn’t work, but because it was so easy to keep funding government operations, which drove them crazy. Maybe the Democrats can get on the VAT train and derail the Tariff Hindenburg?
Have you met a Democrat? The "No tax increases on anyone making less than $400k" party? The party that has been proposing crackpot tax ideas like unrealized capital gains taxes? The party that likes to imagine that corporate taxes are ultimately paid by corporations?
I think VAT is necessary given our deficit, I just see no path in which dems (or republicans) advocate for it. That would be a stunning reversal. I mean it would certainly feel like a betrayal if I had actually believed their incessant claims that we can and should fund their utopia by making the rich "pay their fair share".
One thing is certain, we are going to need higher taxes to wrestle down our debt. It's possible a modest Value Added Tax (VAT) might be legislated to help. However, VATs are regressive and there are many, many modest income American families who'd be hurt by them.
The reason the affluent and rich are better candidates for paying more in taxes is because as Willie Sutton, the colorful character who robbed banks said, it's “because that's where the money is”.
Simplistic view of taxes as a piggy bank to draw from, ignoring consequences for economic growth. VATs are good because they are less distorting than income/corp/capital taxation.
Also, the American tax code is highly progressive by international standards. We need more revenue, not steeper progression.
Everyone is hurt by being taxed. Rich people pay most of the taxes already. Everyone needs to pitch in to right this ship, not just 1%.
The affluent don’t have nearly enough income, or wealth, to fund a European style welfare state, that’s why the VAT is needed. Once you open that Pandora’s box it will be impossible to close, however.
You're incorrectly second guessing me, my concern is getting our debt levels down. To repeat, a modest VAT may be PART of the tax increases required to wrestle down our debt but it won't be enough by itself.
But they aren't where the money is because there aren't very many of them. There's a reason that European welfare states have very high tax rates on the middle class. Our rich people already pay marginal rates on income close to what they pay in Germany (52%), but the middle class pays about half what they do in Germany.
So, VAT isn’t crackpot? You just think it can’t be done? No one thought a President of the United States would levy a tariff on imports from an island inhabited by penguins. But there you have it.
Lately I've been reading so much left-of-center praise for free-market economics and I can't stop thinking, "where have you been all my life?".
Tarrifs seem like an amazing tool when you assume that the consumer isn't the one paying it. And de jure they are not the ones actually paying an import duty. The thinking is, foreign exporters, not wanting to pay the tariff, will invest in US manufacturing.
This is much like how Dems sell corporate tax increases. Make corporations pay their fare share. It's like a piggy bank to draw from.
Of course, both of the above taxes are incident mostly on consumers/workers.
Populism is about feel-good economic policies. Trump's dose of economic populism was a shot of adrenaline to the GOP. Dems like to message about the GOP only caring about tax cuts for billionaires. The tariffs are a hard one to spin. It's a big tax increase. It's cheered by working-class types and hated by the business class. The explicitly stated goals are to produce good middle-class jobs. The bad effects on the rich (via the stock market, for now) are being described as necessary, rather than as being coincidental or "just volatility". Trump is outflanking the left with economically illiterate feel-good crap.
I ended up getting into an argument with my wife and a friend at a bar. We were complaining about the tariffs, and Trump. I added that I thought there was a lot of blame to go around for this kind of rotten economic thinking. I pointed out Bernie's consistent stance against free trade. They said, no, Bernie just wanted more labor/environmental standards in trade deals. I replied that was nonsense, that Bernie considered outsourcing to "low wage countries" to be bad for American workers, which was definitionally an anti free-trade stance. They just could not accept that Trump's ideas were a recent import from the left, even if not the specific details (like using tariffs per se, as Noah points out).
It's sad for me that both parties are embracing industrial policy rather than free-market economics. Noah is a pretty free-markets guy that nonetheless is a big fan of IP. I think he let himself become a bit of a cheerleader for Biden's version of it at times, though. I didn't like Biden's industrial policy. Way too everything bagel and subsidies focused. They added even more regulations rather than trying to streamline. They put in all sorts of reqs like childcare, "paying area wages", and DEI, guaranteeing that resulting projects would never be cost competitive without subsidies. The pay-fors were highly inefficient corporate tax increases. They plowed money into regressive giveaways like student debt relief, destroying the fiscal air desperately needed for investment. Their anti-trust regime accepted making US firms less competitive globally, to extinguish their political power. Politics tends to make governments bad investors.
I would like to see a government boost industry through more efficient taxation (especially on capital investment deductions), targeted deregulation, mutually beneficial trade deals. Prove to me that you know what you are doing through those avenues, then we can talk about letting you spend some of my money on your subsidies plans. We started our IP push with subsides. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me when the underlying issue is structurally higher costs.
Isn't the issue that lots of people believe that "free-market economics" (in the Free World) is a good way to ensure that China becomes the world's only industrial power?
Yes it’s nuts to treat manufacturing as a jobs program in the context of a long-term structural labor shortage.
Noah’s concept is that you achieve productivity growth through investment leading to innovation. Productivity growth is the only way to produce more goods without producing less of other stuff people want (like childcare, healthcare, etc.)
The problem with protectionism, through this lense, is that we aren’t addressing productivity. We are trying to cajole manufacturing without a real productivity growth plan.
There would still be some domestic competition and productivity growth, but usually productivity growth is much better when firms must compete in export markets.
Progressives want to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Not only are these tariffs disastrous policy, but Trump gifted the left by completely owning the choice and taking a single public action so that all voters will know who to blame. This isn’t a government shutdown where blame can be debated. The only thing the left could do to screw this up is to embrace the policy. Amen, Noah, for calling this out.
“Just throw tariffs under the bus, and spare the American people the college lecture about ideology.”
Absolutely true. The events of the past week show that the entire 30 year ''anti-neoliberalism'' tantrum on the left is just completely and totally intellectually bankrupt.
You're becoming the centrist parody of the Jacobin a bit.
For the Jacobin, every time Republicans did something bad, it was the Democrats fault for "letting them". Usually because the Democrats were squishy neoliberals.
For you, the Republicans are doing something bad and it's the Democrats fault because they have too much dislike for neoliberals.
Making stuff in authoritarian countries with near slave labor is bad actually. Demanding that products that come into America don't come from sweatshops that poison their workers isn't some radical Marxist take. (It's also orthogonal to tariffs which don't achieve that outcome)
It's also April of 2025. The midterms are November of 2026.
Even if the Democrats craft the perfect most viral message at the moment, it is probably too soon for it to help beyond the margins.
Noah didn't suggest Trump's tarrifs were Dems fault. He observed that they are failing to capture the moment, provided evidence of that, and then offered a theory as to why that is. You are confirming his theory by taking the view that free trade is actually bad, in defense of Dems.
Free trade is very broadly defined. If you buy a truck from Japan, that's free trade. If you buy a ton of cocoa beans produced by enslaved children in Guinea, that's also free trade. If you buy 45 kg of good Colombian white cocaine, that's also free trade.
If you object to some of those, that's fine. It means that Free Trade isn't a word with a limitless definition.
OK, but employing 10 year olds to make soccer balls is also illegal in the united states. Then Nike got in trouble for importing Pakistani soccer balls that were made that way.
Was making rules blocking trade made by child labor a "criminal" law or a "trade" one?
If you buy a truck from Japan, it isn’t free trade, because since 1968 the USA has placed a 25% tariff of light duty trucks because of a retaliatory tax that Europe placed on US chickens (which is why that tariff is known as the chicken tax). Since it has never been removed (and work arounds that importers tried by putting useless seats in the bed of a truck like the Subaru Brat or adding seats to Ford Transit vans that were removed after being imported, didn’t work) shows how hard stupid tariffs are to remove.
Hi, Noah! Chuck Grassley’s bill has a Democratic co-sponsor Maria Cantwell. Last week, Tim Kaine also introduced a resolution to block Trump’s tariffs on Canada that passed—to be fair four Republicans voted for it. Do you think this could be a case where Republicans seem to be leading the charge legislatively because their voices stick out more in our heads? It’s pretty unusual to see Republicans in Congress push back against Trump especially this immediately and openly. I wonder if this is a case where the Republicans aren’t actually leading the charge, but their actions are more memorable.
I think this is one of those instances where the mainstream Dems are trying to appeal to the leftists again. When there's a vote to repeal the tariffs there won't be a single Dem vote against. And Harris was right to shank the left in her presidential run. It's too bad that after the loss the party cannot seem to end it's fascination with these leftist imbeciles who know nothing about how economics works.
This is a slam dunk situation for the Democrats but the only reason they will not be able to take full advantage of this situation is because they share the retarded beliefs of Bernie and AOC (it’s been a few days and not a peep from that socialist moron) and not in economic and social liberalism like classical liberals do. The country is fucked because the popular active politicians on both sides are complete idiots when it comes to economic policies. It’s up to centrists on both sides to blast both sides and bring the country back from the brink.
The far wings of both parties are anti-liberal and hence anti-progress/abundance.
Yep. I worry that the free-market constituency is insignificant electorally. It's sad to me that, with all the hate on tariffs lately, no one attacks them from a simple liberty perspective.
??? Bernie and AOC are pretty much bog standard european-style social democrats. Are the governments of Northern Europe run by morons? They seem pretty fnctional.
More progressive income tax rates and national health care would not exactly turn the US into a dystopia, enacted 20 years ago they would have made Trump less likely.
No, they're not. Unlike the morons Bernie and AOC, European style social Democrats fund their national health care systems and other programs with heavy taxes on the middle class. If Democrats are willing to run on that and win, I may be personally against it but I'll accept it. The reason they keep talking about taxing the rich is because they know that taxing the middle class is a losing proposition. I personally don't want a national health care system because most national health care systems suck. Also, I would like US to be rich and not poor like most European countries.
Northern European countries are deeply wealthy and have entirely functioning health care systems
Do you prefer US healthcare to French system? I am with you on the need to tax middle class to achieve that, but France seems to have way better system (and outcomes) than US.
There are tradeoffs but I would prefer the US healthcare system because of shorter wait times. When people are comparing outcomes, they usually mean life expectancy and life expectancy in the US is not worse because of health care. It's because of worse health, murders, car accidents & drug overdoses. None of those are fixed by a better healthcare system. I know that a lot of Americans think that life in EU is better but most immigrants from Asia, Africa and South America prefer moving to the US instead of EU. That should tell you something.
The people I know in France don’t express concerns about long wait times. Single payer systems have that problem but countries like France and Germany have more blended approach, which seems better. They provide a floor but not a ceiling (for people who want to spend more for more/faster/better care.
I understand part of your point about drug overdoses, murders/homicides/suicide rate, etc. But poor health. You don’t think healthcare system/capacity has anything to do with the actual health of the population? If that is true, why have a health system at all?
> You don’t think healthcare system/capacity has anything to do with the actual health of the population? If that is true, why have a health system at all?
I don't. It's an individual's responsibility to exercise and eat well when they become adults. The purpose of the healthcare system is the same as it's been before there was allopathy - to treat sick people. I was skinny when I was in India and am fat after living in the US. I don't think the difference is down to the quality of healthcare but my age and personal habits.
You know - there is a massive difference between Germany or France and Albania when it comes to wealth. I am from EU btw
I’d say economically the evidence strongly suggests that Europe is run by morons.
Almost northern European polities end up governed by the centre right for the majority of time
I'm sorry but your empty generalisations betray your ignorance of either the politics of Europe or the US. Do you think the idiosyncratic US health care system, or it's idiosyncratic laws for political campaign finance are to do with cultural preferences of US votes? Can you explain that? Can you explain how the popularity of Front Nationale in France is about something other than rightwing social and cultural preferences of a significant subset of the French public ?
The center right in Northern Europe is left by US standards
Lol. That's not true. Except for issues like health care where the US is the single outlier like campaign finance or health care. To the extent that I don't think it makes sense to say these are 'rightwing' views.
The left/right divide in the US is mainly based on social and cultural issues and almost every party in EU is to the left of center in the US in that aspect. Republican voters love Social Security and Medicare.
Totally agree. Can anyone figure out how to be the party with 65-70% margins and not 51-49%? Centrists unite! You have nothing to lose but the wing-nuts in both parties.
Is There Nowhere To Hide?
What Is The Flight To Quality Safe Haven Asset this time around??
With the dollar weakening, it sure doesn't seem to be US Treasuries. Gold, maybe? Swiss bonds? Dutch, German, Korean, or Japanese bonds???
This is dumb. Trump is in office because huge swaths of the electorate is unhappy with unrestricted free trade that doesn't have any corresponding benefit to workers who lose their jobs. Trump is an idiot, obviously, and his medicine is the equivalent of injecting bleach into your body. But that doesn't mean "become reflexive defenders of a bad status quo" is the right move, either.
Politically the right move is just to point out the bleach.
I think trade has been very beneficial to US citizens in terms of raising the standards of living and allowing the US economy to grow faster than EU. The average American is richer and leads a more luxurious lifestyle compared to the average European. Politically, the right move is to tax the large percentage of winners and pay off the small percentage of losers instead of lowering the standards of living for everyone.
I think Noah's position on this before today was a pretty good one. We need to use targeted trade restrictions and investments to rebuild some critical domestic industries, particularly semiconductors and energy. That's more or less what Biden was doing before Trump was elected, and Noah was very positive about it (in the past.) I worry that this nuanced language will devolve into some kind of "unrestricted pro-free-trade is always best" overreaction, and that this will be both bad policy *and* bad politics.
Unrestricted free trade is always the best, even though exceptions may need to be made for national security reasons. Protectionism for domestic industries is a pretty bad reason to add tariffs. There was no reason to add tariffs for EV cars, batteries and solar cells if you care about an abundance of green energy.
The ability to manufacture batteries, solar cells and semiconductors is vital for national security. So is the ability to build cars and other heavy industrial machines. If you don't have the industrial base to build those things, you've already lost the next major war.
You can make strategic investments or subsidize these industries for defense purposes without requiring the corresponding tariffs for the consumer sector, where EV cars from BYD or batteries or solar cells are not a national security issue.
I think the best way to think about this is a counter factual: EU decides that software and internet services is a critical industry and slaps massive services tariffs on all US tech companies (Google/Meta/Amazon/etc) that currently dominate the global market. Or pick your favorite other dominant US industry where the US has a surplus. Does the US say, yep, fair point, or do we scream bloody murder? Is our argument that we just deserve to protect all our favored industries? Can’t every country decide to do the same thing? If you can’t compete…figure out a way to compete, or fight on different terrain. Nat security/environmental externalities is a good argument, but the real problem is China. So you build an anti-dumping coalition. Not shred your allies with tariffs. P.s. look at US internal migration. People and jobs move to where it is easiest/cheapest to innovate and build. If you think these tariffs are good, you also should believe in Michigan slapping tariffs on cars made in South Carolina. Or the Northeast states slapping tariffs on anything made in the South. The US has been a huge trade winner. Just not in every sector, and we can do a lot better in training, infrastructure, education, etc.
Agree again. The problem is that we have also made it too difficult and expensive to invest in infrastructure and housing to allow workers to relocate to faster growing regions. And our education system is geared to 4 year college and advanced graduates and not to vocational training for high paying technical jobs that could be the base for more small and large scale manufacturing. In other words, have a competitiveness strategy geared around jobs for the people who aren’t in the knowledge class, who are mostly low and middle class. Build more rungs in the economic ladder for the people and communities most impacted by lower wage competition from abroad.
So far, from my transatlantic point of view, I thought the unexpected quietness of the Dems was either due to a) leaderlessnes or b) the tactical reasoning to show people what they voted for.
Noah saying c) Dem sympathies for tariffs might be a part of it really came as a surprise.
The manufacturing unions are loving the tariffs. The policy is so obviously popular with the working class base the dems aspire to be representative of. Making liberal economic arguments about why taxes are bad for growth and growth is important etc etc is just not their comfort zone at all. They prepared speeches about why Trump cutting taxes was bad and are on the back foot now. They are accustomed to blasting Trump's vile racism/xenophobia/greed/whatever. Here, he is making a very well-intentioned policy mistake due to errors in economic reasoning. They are more focused on a handful of deportations of non-citizens that are awful, but insignificant to most Americans. They are similarly focused on DOGE spending and staffing cuts. They can't associate a bad intention with the tariffs like they can for the above things. They still think they can gain power by convincing voters Trump is a bad man. They would like to point to the increase in manufacturing employment under Biden, to suggest their approach was working and Trump is wrong, but there was no such increase. Oh well.
- Tariffs are not popular with the working class base, you think they are? Have you checked the polling lately?
- Taxes are bad for growth? (you think a nation with no taxes would succeed?)
- Trump imposes the biggest tax rise in history and that puts opposition politicians on their back foot?
- Trump isn't vile & racist & xenophobic & greedy? Those tiresome truth tellers.
- Trump's tariffs are well-intentioned? Well-intentioned economic warfare on our closest allies? Do tell.
- Those foolish do-gooders, so concerned that people are being disappeared without due process. Can't they wake up and see no one cares?
- Cancer research is gutted, scientific R&D cancelled, those silly people who think that matters.
- ("They can't associate a bad intention with the tariffs like they can for the above things.) Unintelligible.
- Straw man. Who thinks they can gain power by convincing people Trump is bad? No, we gain power because Trump is a disaster for the nation.
- Factory building and manufacturing capital investment were way up under Biden, the approach was working, you avoid this by making it all about manufacturing employment, which, by the way, was up under Biden. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP
Can you be any wronger? A bizaare mix of the obtuse and the untrue, and the spooky (sneering at those who care about the rule of law)
I think you misread me in a lot of places because you think I am pro Trump, which I’m not.
I’m disappointed in democrats letting him win and not capitalizing on his missteps artfully.
I didnt assume you are pro-Trump, you strike me as more anti-anti-Trump.
I'm anti-Trump, and that's why I share Noah's disappointment with the Democrats with respect to their messaging on Trump's tariff policy.
I just see you reading me fabulously uncharitably throughout. For instance:
"Taxes are bad for growth? (you think a nation with no taxes would succeed?)"
No, I don't think that. You are just reading concise writing profoundly uncharitably. People that criticize new, large tax programs from an economic growth perspective are rarely advocating for a minarchist zero-tax regime. Straw man. They, and I, are just pointing out that we already have a lot of tax and policymakers should think in a sober way about the growth consequences of taxation. Biden's corporate tax increases were not presented by MSM or Demorcatic policymakers as having any growth consequences whatsoever, for example. Complete denial of tradeoffs in the area of taxation.
So I am pointing out that the Dems own bad policy framings have hindered their ability to fully capitalize on Trump's disaster, which is sad for me as a Democrat. So yes, I say that Dems have put themselves into a position where it is uncomfortable for them to criticize the growth consequences of tax increases. Then you just caricature me as endorsing zero taxes. Absurd.
"Trump isn't vile & racist & xenophobic & greedy? Those tiresome truth tellers."
More caricaturing of my position by profoundly uncharitable reading of concise writing. Trump is a uniquely despicable individual in our political landscape and should be called out for that. What is disappointing for me, as a Democrat, is that, even as it became clear that voters were fed up enough with Democrat's policies to elect Trump *despite* his character, Democrats refused to seriously re-consider the policies that were making them so unpopular. They were so invested in Trump just being too evil to vote for.
Now, faced with a well-intentioned Policy blunder by Trump, Dems are caught flat-footed because they completely bungled their opportunity to address the concerns Trump claims to be addressing. Their own budget-busting everything bagel subsidies programs and giveaways to unions stunk, so they can't just criticize Trump's massively delusional policy intervention. No, they are just quibbling on the details.
All of your bullet points are exactly this. Reading me as not seeing Trump's failures as failures. Not so. What I want is a party that unapologetically endorses free trade and has humility about large scale government interventions in the macroeconomy. The Democrats are not that, at all, and that hurts them when in power, as we've seen, and also when they are the opposition, as we are seeing.
I re-read your post, and it is a rant. Rants do not make fine distinctions not because they are concise, but because they come from anger. Nuance has been left behind. That your anger is pitched at Democrats is telling.
"Biden's corporate tax increases" That is not concision, it is wrong. Biden proposed a corporate tax increase from 21 to 28%. It did not go into law. Centering anger against Democrats for a modest proposed tax increase that did not pass while Trump is destroying the world economy is at a minimum, strange.
Your prescription for the Democrats "a party that unapologetically endorses free trade and has humility about large scale government interventions in the macroeconomy." undoubtedly reflects your personal politics, but there is zero evidence the Democrats lost for those reasons. A lack of avidity for untrammeled free trade! Resurrect neo-liberalism! Your analysis is original, Ill give you that.
Here are some meat and potatoes explanations: Biden was too loose on the border. Biden was too old, he needed to step aside so the Democrats could run a real primary. Harris failed to stake out distance between herself and Biden. "Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you" was effective, not responding was a mistake. It was a terrible year for incumbents worldwide. Take your pick. All pretty persuasive!
I'll agree that Democrats are not all rising to the opccasion, but it isn't because they shot themselves in the foot under Biden by not channeling 1992 DNC talking points. Every Democrats is well-positioned to tell the truth: The corrupt and stupid Trump is blowing up the economy because he is corrupt and stupid.
In the medium to long term, the detention and deporting of tourists and green card holders is going to have a far bigger effect on Americans than the tariffs.
Well, the lefties were right, the shock from opening to China was immense, though it followed a few decades of opening to Japan and Korea on autos, steel, and shipbuilding. The loss of old-line manufacturing jobs was severe, and most of those workers never recovered their (high, union-aided) incomes. The Democrats never really capitalized on that, largely because they had shifted their center of power to the knowledge workers, and the conflict with the working class on "social" issues was strong. But the Democrats are still intrinsically suspicious of markets and want to micro-manage the economy. Then again, that manufacturing proletariat class is shrinking steadily so it's not going to be a place to get lots of votes, however all this turns out.
Bonaparte: "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake"
Yes a combination of those
Good point the Dem party doesn't really have a leader or demagogue to rally around like Trump has become for them the past decades. That is one reason messaging is all over the place, in addition to the fact that the current media environment isn't suited for long format takes.
i sincerely hope it is b
I think you are cherry picking Dem comments a bit to build a narrative of Democrats missing the moment. The comments below counter that narrative.
Charles Schumer on April 3: "Donald Trump's tariffs are the largest tax hike on families since World War II. And of course markets are plunging. Donald Trump is singlehandedly tanking the markets."
Mark Kelly on April 3: "Trump claims that his auto tariffs will promote car manufacturing in America. Instead, people are losing their jobs, prices are going to skyrocket, and American families are going to foot the bill."
Mark Kelly on April 2: "Today is Donald Trump’s "Liberation Day." But what exactly is he liberating Americans from, our savings and 401Ks? His tariffs are going to be a giant tax on American families, raising the price of groceries, housing, cars, and so much more."
Amy Klobuchar on April 6: "The Trump tariff tax is the largest tax increase since 1968. It will increase costs by thousands of dollars per family. @SenSchumer and I introduced an amendment Friday night to rescind these taxes if the price of everyday goods increases.
Senate Republicans voted it down."
Also, am I dreaming, or didn't Kamala Harris hammer Trump repeatedly during the 2024 campaign about how American consumers would suffer economically if Trump's tariff proposals were implemented?
I agree. The predominant Democratic reaction is that Trump is nuts. Prices and unemployment will rise, the man is crazy.
Once again Noah has identified the root cause of our problems...Democrats!
His headline is typical of his narrative. In it trump as the agency of fire!
Over and over Noah resolves the republicans and Magas of their responsibility and manages to blame Dems and libs for either causing the repubs to be they way they are, or not doing anything to stop them. It's Crazy.
"After this is all over, if Americans decide that “anti-neoliberalism” means tariffs, they will build effigies of Milton Friedman in their front yards."
Shouldn't that be idol instead of effigy, as in they would praise the figure, not burn it? 😛
Well OK, OK 😊
No, an effigy is a model or sculpture of a person.
Burning or putting pins into one can make a rather striking point.
Reshoring manufacturing to America assumes there’s a large cohort of unemployed workers with the fitness, skills and desire to work in factories. Is there? 18% of Americans are 65+. Meanwhile the median age in Vietnam is 33.
Skills and education? China STEM graduates exceed 3.57 million annually (40% of graduates).
U.S. graduates 584K STEM annually (20% of graduates).
Fitness? 40% of Americans are obese. Opioid addiction is rampant. And many cannot access or afford basic health care. US life expectancy is 77.5 years. Canada’s 81.3, Japan 84.5.
Highly paid unionized auto manufacturing jobs are the exception, not the rule. Bottom line: are Americans willing to work making shoes and garments for minimum wage?
Interesting.
BUT, since we're a bunch of eggheads here, it would be interesting to discuss free trade, immigration, unions/labor and the seething rage that seems to animate many Americans.
First, there was Japan. Then NAFTA. Then the China Shock. Then the 2008 crisis. I'll leave COVID and its aftermath (inflation etc) asides as it's not man-made.
Is labor always wrong to worry about intl' trade and immigration as ways to keep domestic labor subdued? It's also okay to point out we've adapted to Japan, NAFTA, China, 2008 etc. but
1- are we sure those deaths of despair and heartland misery are all fake?
2- are we sure that the alt-right is powered solely by racial/sexual resentment and social status games? like, nothing to do with economic malaise at all?
3- are we sure as to what happened to all those blue collar workers in the new economy? did they all really become baristas, gym teachers and sandwich makers?
I don't have determined answers here. I certainly believe that the transition away from mass manufacturing employment could have been managed better (and make greater use of automation within developed economies given the benefits of industrial clusters/jobs associated with industrial production like R&D etc) but I'm well aware that, on paper, the US economy is the envy of the world.
I'm also constantly puzzled by stories of "median Americans are wealthy beyond belief" (as Noah states constantly) and "top 10% of Americans are doing 50% of the spending"... I fully understand wealth can be measured both absolutely and relatively but it's a bit strange to have so many seething with rage if their economic situation was one of quiet satiation...
I'd be interested to see how structurally different the type of employment/the economic structure is between the USA of today and, say, the ideal of Danemark/Sweden (Norway doesn't count given their oil reserves).
"and make greater use of automation within developed economies given the benefits of industrial clusters/jobs associated with industrial production like R&D etc)"
Not sure what you mean here. American manufacturing output levels never stopped increasing. What happened is that our share of global manufacturing output declined and employment in the sector declined. Increasing output while decreasing employment was only possible due to huge productivity increases and automation is a big part of that story.
On your broader comment...
It's better to pursue growth and then redistribute than to try to achieve mythical equal growth. Worrying about unequal growth leads to market-killing policies and not growing. Despite what you might've heard, we have been increasing social spending outlays as a percentage of gdp quite steadily for a *very* long time, including in recent decades.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-longrun
The reason it doesn't *feel* that way to people is that the costs of housing / education / healthcare have grown too fast and the population has aged so that the worker:retiree ratio has declined a lot. These are issues, to be sure, but they aren't international trade or immigration related. Protectionism would make the cost issues even worse here.
It seems like the labor class you speak of has rejected the idea of redistribution as a corrective to unequal growth. Not for the usual leftist reason- denial that redistribution is adequate or occurring at all. More "I want a job not a handout, I want dignity"-type rhetoric. That's not really an *economic* viewpoint, so that's a problem for the whole grow and redistribute project.
People don't like losing entitlement once they have them, but it seems rare for working class folks to demand handouts in American in 2025. That seems more like something well-educated, affluent leftists clamor for, as a kind of moral grandstanding. I just see it as the least bad way to reconcile economic growth (never equal) and democracy (always demanding equality). Cracks appearing, definitely.
on the automation thing. I find it common to see like a TikTok video of some robot with some caption like "Japan/China/Korea/whomever has these super robots building things! we're screwed!"
Look at actual value-add per manufacturing worker and you'll see how on-another-level the US is there. We aren't #2 in manufacturing output (despite huge cost disadvantages) for nothing. Productivity in the US manufacturing sector is world-beating and the entire point of automation is productivity. Don't think in terms of "how much robots" or TikTok vids. Look at productivity stats. That's what matters.
Well said. Seems to me that the US weathered the shift to globalism as well or better than any developed nation. Looking at growth rates, median wages, inflation, unemployment, GDP, global competitiveness, tech capitalization or whatever.
If Trump actually uses this as a lever to lower global tariffs then he will be a hero. I am very doubtful though. Everything I have ever seen him do or say shouts out “idiot”.
You have also said things well!
One big problem I have with Trump/Miran and this whole overvalued USD / unfair trading obsession is that we've seen de-industrialization (defined as decreasing manufacturing share of output and employment) consistently across rich countries. That's true even with more protectionist policies than ours, or a non-USD currency.
Low trade barriers and labor cost differentials are fully adequate to explain declining manufacturing employment in rich countries. No need to posit unfair trading practices (true possible RE: China but ridiculous vis a vis Canada, EU, etc.) or a grand macro fx theory.
US is doing just fine under globalization. Unfortunately, demagoguery sells. The US has absolutely zero need to create jobs. Jobs are readily available for those that want to work and the pay is excellent by any global standard. All that matters here is productivity growth and these tariff policies create windfall profits in the short-term for certain domestic producers, while actively harming the prospects for productivity growth that would drive long-run prosperity.
My theory is the heartland malaise is really just a downstream effect of the Sackler family inflicting an opioid epidemic on rural America. Everything’s going to feel a little worse when you know drugged out zombies, it’s not just a thing that happens in the inner city.
Otherwise, that same rural America “struggling” so severely has quite a few people with $50,000 boats they can cruise around in every summer weekend flying some bizarre Trump flag (Visit any midwestern pond in July).
Let’s see how they maintain those boats in the recession, with all parts twice as much.
I think it’s very telling when people single out the Sackler family and entirely ignore the role of the FDA, physicians, “harm-reduction” local politics, synthetic drug innovation, and even cultural factors.
Like yeah, there was unethical behavior at Purdue, but our healthcare system is not supposed to rely on the goodwill of pharma firms. The FDA is supposed to block dangerous drugs. Physicians are supposed to understand what they are prescribing, etc.
Ultimately $2 fentanyl pills are a technological innovation, substituting for a $20 heroin bag. The manufacturing process is easy to hide relative to agricultural operations to grow poppy or coca. These tech innovations in the black market were not causes by any institutions in the US.
Also, I know it's pretty much taken as a proven fact that over prescribing pain pills caused the heroin epidemic, the actual evidence for it is extremely weak. Heroine use was on the up swing before it entered the market. And outside of anecdotes, there's not a lot of evidence to support the 'got addicted to pain pills, switched to heroine.'
Simple minds can't resist heaping blame on a wealthy Jewish family. I don't want to dismiss that the company acted unethically, even illegally, but to attribute all this suffering to this drug company that merely marketed a higher-dose time-release version of Oxycodone, a drug that had been around forever, is just silly. There is hardly any difference between abusing Percocet and abusing Oxycontin. The doc prescribes the same daily dose, the Oxycontin is just fewer pills. No reason you can't pop four Percs and get the same effects as the one Oxycontin pill.
Ever since 2016 we’ve been hearing about these poor left behind people as a way to explain Trump’s support. Most of the Trump supporters I know are upper middle class people with good jobs, nice homes and vehicles. I’ve always said most of his support is due to cultural issues, not economic.
Similarly, the folks I hear cursing NAFTA on the left are always college-educated knowledge workers or teachers. In every case.
> 3- are we sure as to what happened to all those blue collar workers in the new economy? did they all really become baristas, gym teachers and sandwich makers?
No, actually a lot of them end up on disability and are excluded from unemployment statistics. Over 5% of working age adults in America are now on disability even though the vast majority are physically able to work. It's what we do with long term unemployed to hide the insanity of the system from the general public.
It’s true that fake disability is an increasing and chronic problem but it is not at all true that the unemployment rate is pushed deceptively. Yellen famously pointed often at other stats like the employment-population ratio to argue that there was more labor market slack than suggested by unemployment.
Yes, Janet Yellen knows it and I know it because I know how the numbers are calculated. But it is hidden from the general public who will hear exactly one number - "the unemployment rate is X%" and that's it. Thus the politically expedient solution is generally unknown to the voting public. Nobody is technically lying, but the numbers are calculated in a way to make them mean something very different than what their name indicates. I call that deceptive.
We are only two trading days into this and it's the Democrats fault? I don't think so. Were you in the streets Noah? I was.
The democratic response is coming in 2026. The Dinocrats may not lead that, I get it. But it is coming. No Kings!
Chuck and Bernie are about to get run over.
Those demonstrations might have been cathartic, but I challenge you to identify a single coherent message coming out it--one which could actually give direction to action. What, "no kings!"? Sounds like a line from a Rush song and is just as empty and irrelevant to the moment. The Dems are simultaneously utterly directionless and spastic--a bad combination. "Do something!" is the politics of tantrum. Before they can *do* anything, in any kind of coherent and concentrated manner, they need to first figure out who they are--because they haven't a clue and, worse, the voting public doesn't either. To the average voter the Dems just look like a hodge-podge of deeply unpopular cultural and identitarian boutique issues.
"Trump is a bad leader who is hurting America" was the unifying message. Now his bad leadership is wiping out people's 401(k)s and soon it'll be taking away their jobs. At some level, when leadership is this bad you don't need a policy document, you don't *want* a policy document. You need a growing mass-movement that makes it obvious (to voters, Congress and other institutions in our society) that Trump isn't an all-powerful, scary, popular leader.
Occupy Wall Street all over again?
OWS raised awareness about wealth inequality but didn’t have a clear plan or any institutional support to address it. “Oppose and remove Trump from power because he’s hurting the country and might hurt you,” is a very clear plan and has gobs of institutional support.
Fair enough; the situation is much simpler if all you want to do is get Congress to massively limit or remove his power to tariff.
aitch,
Are you serious? What did you want? Riots? Some Djin to smack down stupid.
I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat. -Will Rogers
There were no rumbles in the streets. No rioting. That is what democracy looks like. Many had never been to a protest before. We are talking about people's livelihoods here, not Democrats vs. Republicans. For the record, I am a registered Republican. Though I didn't vote for stupid. Likely going to change that registration and join the disorganized. In fact, I will, as I type this, I resolve to make the trip to the commision today and change that.
"No Kings!" IS the message. The future leadership is undetermined but likely somewhere amid these protests. These tariffs are unlawful. These deportations are unlawful. The destruction of government agencies without congressional consent is unlawful. Impoundment is unlawful—a litany of unlawful acts are being perpetrated by an Executive gone, full-on King. Let's not start with the other unwise acts that endanger our future - defunding fundamental research that pays two dollars for every one dollar invested, and was vetted by the most vicious and competitive grant process in the world. Gone. Now forcing business leaders to restructure supply chains on a whim. No Kings! indeed. FDT.
If Chuck Schumer had stopped the continuing resolution, we might not have had to spend this past Saturday in the streets. You can't collect tariffs without Customs agents on the job. We might not have had to lose 10 Trillion dollars in capital assets. Just as likely, it would only have delayed the inevitable.
Change happens slowly sometimes. Other times, it is a tipping point. It is coming. The Democrats are blameless in this fire - Schumer made sure of that. The depths we are plumbing will call for a new remake of American policy and institutions. I hope the leaders rising sans Schumer and Sanders are up for the task.
Now, please excuse me while I go out and buy some dishes and underwear while I can.
Everything is fine.
Tim
So who is taking the lead, that fool DeLuzio quoted in this post? Dems loosing with DeLuzio, what a great plan!
Buzen,
This is a good question. I don't know. One day at a time. I'm appreciating some that I had previously discounted. I'm not interested in individuals at this point. I just want a functioning economy and local fire department and hospital (the last of which depending largely on medicaid and medicare functioning as intended.) There's no joy in outing Democrats these days. Certainly there are no clear answers.
Tim
No need to wait until 2026. Watch the Virginia governor's race; election is in November 2025. Abigail Spanberger is a moderate D, former US House member (didn't run for reelection to prepare 2025 race). She's strongly favored to win in this purple state. In prior election in 2021, over 3 MILLION votes cast. That's big. Plus DOGE layoffs have hit Virginia hard, putting elected Republicans in a bind: they fear Trump/Musk & MAGA voters, thus their response to laid-off constituents is weak (e.g., discounted adult education at the University of Virginia).
This seems like a mix of Democrats not commenting and Democrats not having adequate messaging platforms to comment with. Individual Democratic senators might have commented, but unless they have substantial personal social media followings they're shouting into the wind.
This is a self-inflicted problem to some extent. Part of being a politician in the modern era is building up your personal social media platform and farming engagement and living the influencer life. Information is heavily democratized now and Democrats have as many ways to get their message out as anyone.
But it's a real problem Democrats have and it makes this kind of thing much harder. Especially since institutions that would have served as key players in communicating the ideas of left-leaning elites (such as the mainstream media and universities) are all under direct assault from Trump for speaking out against the regime. Outside of actual campaign events, Democratic politicians have historically relied on these institutions to communicate their message indirectly, and now it's all being burned out from under them.
I do agree that Democrats aren't being nearly vocal enough with the platforms they do have, however. It really does feel like many of them aren't even trying.
The bigger problem Noah is identifying though is that several of the people with platforms are using them to try to claim that they are the real supporters of tariffs, and Trump is just doing them wrong.
I think Noah is right! But in a way, he almost understates the problem here. I think a lot of what's happening here is that we're now seeing the same dynamic with Democrats that we used to see with Republicans or businesspeople.
Imagine that you're a Democratic congressman with a few hundred social media followers. You can either post a milquetoast message about how Trump is bad and continue to have a few hundred followers, or you can post a controversial "Maybe Trump is right about some things" take and immediately be seen across national news for the controversy you'll create. Granted, a lot of the people will be spotlighting you as a source of hatred, but your follower count will shoot up and everyone will hear what you have to say. Whatever people think of what you said, you're now cemented in the public consciousness a Bold Truth Teller who goes against the grain.
This is a common dynamic with Trump. It's the dynamic that has allowed him to take over institution after institution. We live in an engagement-driven world, and he's so crazy that every individual in your institution always stands to farm the most engagement by finding a way to agree with him. It's a giant tragedy of the commons where agreeing with Trump becomes individually beneficial to their social media stats, their likes and follows. We've seen this happen previously with the Republican party, with the business community, and so on. Hundreds of reasonable people coming forward with engagement-farming posts. "Okay, I know he sounds crazy, but hear me out..." And one by one, the institutions fall.
This has proven to be an incredibly dangerous pattern for other institutions. It's a huge part of what's destroyed institution after institution, because it's very hard to fight against without top-down enforcement. You really need to have leadership that will call out what's happening and credibly punish defectors or this dynamic will shred your entire movement apart. It's why every organization that isn't explicitly anti-Trump drifts towards Trumpism over time.
Fighting this on a messaging level is going to require that the Democratic party accept a greater degree of top-down leadership than it has previously been willing to tolerate. It's not enough to hope that everyone organically opposes Trump and no one takes the bait - the incentive for individuals to defect is too great. People who defect don't even think they're defecting, they just think they're sticking to their beliefs and being bold truth-tellers.
The big question is whether the Democratic party is willing to accept getting their messaging from a top-down anti-fascist leader, and whether anyone is willing to step up and become that leader. Anything less, and we'll soon see a hundred Deluzio types tearing the coalition apart from within for their personal gain.
Curious… which institutions are you suggesting he is taking over? I can think of the three branches of government and Twitter. Are these what you had in mind, or are there others?
This seems very right and important.
Noah: can you do a piece on GAT v Tariffs; and all this external/internal revenue sourcing nonsense I’m hearing Trump and the MAGAtudes yapping about.
And yes, the Democrats need a spine.
You mean VAT?
Yes. VAT. When I was in law school my tax law professor told me that Arch Conservatives (and he was pretty Conservative) hated VAT — not because it didn’t work, but because it was so easy to keep funding government operations, which drove them crazy. Maybe the Democrats can get on the VAT train and derail the Tariff Hindenburg?
Have you met a Democrat? The "No tax increases on anyone making less than $400k" party? The party that has been proposing crackpot tax ideas like unrealized capital gains taxes? The party that likes to imagine that corporate taxes are ultimately paid by corporations?
I think VAT is necessary given our deficit, I just see no path in which dems (or republicans) advocate for it. That would be a stunning reversal. I mean it would certainly feel like a betrayal if I had actually believed their incessant claims that we can and should fund their utopia by making the rich "pay their fair share".
One thing is certain, we are going to need higher taxes to wrestle down our debt. It's possible a modest Value Added Tax (VAT) might be legislated to help. However, VATs are regressive and there are many, many modest income American families who'd be hurt by them.
The reason the affluent and rich are better candidates for paying more in taxes is because as Willie Sutton, the colorful character who robbed banks said, it's “because that's where the money is”.
Simplistic view of taxes as a piggy bank to draw from, ignoring consequences for economic growth. VATs are good because they are less distorting than income/corp/capital taxation.
Also, the American tax code is highly progressive by international standards. We need more revenue, not steeper progression.
Everyone is hurt by being taxed. Rich people pay most of the taxes already. Everyone needs to pitch in to right this ship, not just 1%.
"Everyone is hurt by being taxed."
That's only true if you believe government services are injurious. Among serious adults, that type of rhetoric is viewed as infantile and extreme.
The affluent don’t have nearly enough income, or wealth, to fund a European style welfare state, that’s why the VAT is needed. Once you open that Pandora’s box it will be impossible to close, however.
You're incorrectly second guessing me, my concern is getting our debt levels down. To repeat, a modest VAT may be PART of the tax increases required to wrestle down our debt but it won't be enough by itself.
But they aren't where the money is because there aren't very many of them. There's a reason that European welfare states have very high tax rates on the middle class. Our rich people already pay marginal rates on income close to what they pay in Germany (52%), but the middle class pays about half what they do in Germany.
So, VAT isn’t crackpot? You just think it can’t be done? No one thought a President of the United States would levy a tariff on imports from an island inhabited by penguins. But there you have it.
Trump will keep calling it a tariff and the Dems can call him a bigger idiot for not knowing the difference.
This was a fire piece.
Lately I've been reading so much left-of-center praise for free-market economics and I can't stop thinking, "where have you been all my life?".
Tarrifs seem like an amazing tool when you assume that the consumer isn't the one paying it. And de jure they are not the ones actually paying an import duty. The thinking is, foreign exporters, not wanting to pay the tariff, will invest in US manufacturing.
This is much like how Dems sell corporate tax increases. Make corporations pay their fare share. It's like a piggy bank to draw from.
Of course, both of the above taxes are incident mostly on consumers/workers.
Populism is about feel-good economic policies. Trump's dose of economic populism was a shot of adrenaline to the GOP. Dems like to message about the GOP only caring about tax cuts for billionaires. The tariffs are a hard one to spin. It's a big tax increase. It's cheered by working-class types and hated by the business class. The explicitly stated goals are to produce good middle-class jobs. The bad effects on the rich (via the stock market, for now) are being described as necessary, rather than as being coincidental or "just volatility". Trump is outflanking the left with economically illiterate feel-good crap.
I ended up getting into an argument with my wife and a friend at a bar. We were complaining about the tariffs, and Trump. I added that I thought there was a lot of blame to go around for this kind of rotten economic thinking. I pointed out Bernie's consistent stance against free trade. They said, no, Bernie just wanted more labor/environmental standards in trade deals. I replied that was nonsense, that Bernie considered outsourcing to "low wage countries" to be bad for American workers, which was definitionally an anti free-trade stance. They just could not accept that Trump's ideas were a recent import from the left, even if not the specific details (like using tariffs per se, as Noah points out).
It's sad for me that both parties are embracing industrial policy rather than free-market economics. Noah is a pretty free-markets guy that nonetheless is a big fan of IP. I think he let himself become a bit of a cheerleader for Biden's version of it at times, though. I didn't like Biden's industrial policy. Way too everything bagel and subsidies focused. They added even more regulations rather than trying to streamline. They put in all sorts of reqs like childcare, "paying area wages", and DEI, guaranteeing that resulting projects would never be cost competitive without subsidies. The pay-fors were highly inefficient corporate tax increases. They plowed money into regressive giveaways like student debt relief, destroying the fiscal air desperately needed for investment. Their anti-trust regime accepted making US firms less competitive globally, to extinguish their political power. Politics tends to make governments bad investors.
I would like to see a government boost industry through more efficient taxation (especially on capital investment deductions), targeted deregulation, mutually beneficial trade deals. Prove to me that you know what you are doing through those avenues, then we can talk about letting you spend some of my money on your subsidies plans. We started our IP push with subsides. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me when the underlying issue is structurally higher costs.
Isn't the issue that lots of people believe that "free-market economics" (in the Free World) is a good way to ensure that China becomes the world's only industrial power?
Yes there is also a NatSec angle. Trump has emphasized the labor angle more. Noah is more focused on production than employment.
Given that we don't have mass unemployment (as we did a decade ago) it is folly to treat manufacturing like a jobs program.
Yes it’s nuts to treat manufacturing as a jobs program in the context of a long-term structural labor shortage.
Noah’s concept is that you achieve productivity growth through investment leading to innovation. Productivity growth is the only way to produce more goods without producing less of other stuff people want (like childcare, healthcare, etc.)
The problem with protectionism, through this lense, is that we aren’t addressing productivity. We are trying to cajole manufacturing without a real productivity growth plan.
There would still be some domestic competition and productivity growth, but usually productivity growth is much better when firms must compete in export markets.
I'd argue it's virtually always folly to treat it that way.
Progressives want to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Not only are these tariffs disastrous policy, but Trump gifted the left by completely owning the choice and taking a single public action so that all voters will know who to blame. This isn’t a government shutdown where blame can be debated. The only thing the left could do to screw this up is to embrace the policy. Amen, Noah, for calling this out.
“Just throw tariffs under the bus, and spare the American people the college lecture about ideology.”
Absolutely true. The events of the past week show that the entire 30 year ''anti-neoliberalism'' tantrum on the left is just completely and totally intellectually bankrupt.
You're becoming the centrist parody of the Jacobin a bit.
For the Jacobin, every time Republicans did something bad, it was the Democrats fault for "letting them". Usually because the Democrats were squishy neoliberals.
For you, the Republicans are doing something bad and it's the Democrats fault because they have too much dislike for neoliberals.
Making stuff in authoritarian countries with near slave labor is bad actually. Demanding that products that come into America don't come from sweatshops that poison their workers isn't some radical Marxist take. (It's also orthogonal to tariffs which don't achieve that outcome)
It's also April of 2025. The midterms are November of 2026.
Even if the Democrats craft the perfect most viral message at the moment, it is probably too soon for it to help beyond the margins.
Noah didn't suggest Trump's tarrifs were Dems fault. He observed that they are failing to capture the moment, provided evidence of that, and then offered a theory as to why that is. You are confirming his theory by taking the view that free trade is actually bad, in defense of Dems.
Free trade is very broadly defined. If you buy a truck from Japan, that's free trade. If you buy a ton of cocoa beans produced by enslaved children in Guinea, that's also free trade. If you buy 45 kg of good Colombian white cocaine, that's also free trade.
If you object to some of those, that's fine. It means that Free Trade isn't a word with a limitless definition.
The last one is a bad example because it’s illegal to manufacture and sell cocaine in the US. It’s banned by criminal law, not trade agreements.
OK, but employing 10 year olds to make soccer balls is also illegal in the united states. Then Nike got in trouble for importing Pakistani soccer balls that were made that way.
Was making rules blocking trade made by child labor a "criminal" law or a "trade" one?
That’s easy. It was a trade law. Other countries are allowed to have different laws around child labor.
If you buy a truck from Japan, it isn’t free trade, because since 1968 the USA has placed a 25% tariff of light duty trucks because of a retaliatory tax that Europe placed on US chickens (which is why that tariff is known as the chicken tax). Since it has never been removed (and work arounds that importers tried by putting useless seats in the bed of a truck like the Subaru Brat or adding seats to Ford Transit vans that were removed after being imported, didn’t work) shows how hard stupid tariffs are to remove.
Hi, Noah! Chuck Grassley’s bill has a Democratic co-sponsor Maria Cantwell. Last week, Tim Kaine also introduced a resolution to block Trump’s tariffs on Canada that passed—to be fair four Republicans voted for it. Do you think this could be a case where Republicans seem to be leading the charge legislatively because their voices stick out more in our heads? It’s pretty unusual to see Republicans in Congress push back against Trump especially this immediately and openly. I wonder if this is a case where the Republicans aren’t actually leading the charge, but their actions are more memorable.
I think this is one of those instances where the mainstream Dems are trying to appeal to the leftists again. When there's a vote to repeal the tariffs there won't be a single Dem vote against. And Harris was right to shank the left in her presidential run. It's too bad that after the loss the party cannot seem to end it's fascination with these leftist imbeciles who know nothing about how economics works.
D's just need to point out that this is the largest tax increase in their lifetimes. Ignore where it is coming from. Rand Paul (!) got it.