Trump repeats huge Biden mistakes in trying to remake the economy with tariffs | Opinion
President Donald Trump, with his typical restraint and appreciation for historical nuance, likes to call Joe Biden the worst president in American history.
So, why is Trump repeating some of the biggest mistakes that Biden and his aides made?
Soon after Biden took office with a narrow victory and thin margins of control in Congress, he shot the moon. He fell under the siren songs of historians who said he could govern like Franklin D. Roosevelt and pursue a sweeping reinvention of the American economy and society.
Biden and his staff catered to the furthest leftward part of his base and frequently misread online political junkies as representative of the larger electorate. Consider two examples: Biden’s relentless efforts to have taxpayers assume student loan debt, a policy that his young, highly educated staff prioritized but that turned off voters who didn’t go to college and who believe in paying their own bills.
Then, there was his administration-wide effort to adopt the most radical transgender policies possible, including eliminating the word “mother” from federal language and badly misjudging the country’s reaction to biological males participating in girls’ sports.
Trump, who seeks to use tariffs to overturn the economic order of the last few decades, is on a similar path. His victory margin over Kamala Harris was bigger than Biden’s in 2020, but it was still historically modest. To Trump and his followers, though, it was a broad mandate to reinvent the American economy, especially on foreign trade.
Sure enough, the super-engaged on his side of the aisle dig it, even as the markets crater and Americans wonder whether they’ll be able to afford everything from shoes to seafood.
To political partisans, the start of a new administration is Year Zero. They ignore the fundamental conservatism, in the literal sense of the word, of American voters. The vast majority want stability, steady improvement and the widest prosperity possible. They want to conserve and build on what they and the country have.
Incremental progress doesn’t make for a banger of a social media post, but it has made America the richest society in human history and positioned us to do more for the world than any nation that preceded us.
Trump won because there was a perception, exacerbated by Biden’s age, that too many things were out of whack. There’s no evidence voters embraced all of Trump’s ideas to throw it out of whack in the other direction.
TRUMP BRINGS DISRUPTION, BUT NOT ALL VOTERS GO ALONG
Trump is a disruptive force and, because he’d been president before, voters knew what they were getting. But when he goes off the rails, a lot of people don’t follow. True believers do, even to the point that plenty of people who spent decades advocating for free markets now embrace government intervention, as long as it comes from the right.
The top issue for voters last year was the economy, exit polls show. Inflation battered consumers and businesses for years, and people wanted relief. What they’re poised to get instead is more price increases for a different reason, an entirely self-inflicted one.
Voters who aren’t political obsessives want prosperity. When the party in power oversees a flagging economy, it is punished, whether it is fully responsible or not.
If anything, more Americans understand trade is vital to that prosperity than have in decades. Gallup polling shows it’s an 80-20 issue, the kind that smart politicians try to own rather than buck.
The Trumpers’ theory of the case seems to be that Americans crave a new economic order that prioritizes domestic manufacturing and righting the perceived wrongs of international commerce — so much, in fact, that they’re willing to embrace a degraded quality of life over it.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pretty much dared Americans to complain, telling NBC News that “the American dream is not ‘let them eat flat screens.’ … We are focused on affordability, but it’s mortgages, it’s cars, it’s real wage gains.”
He might want to tell his boss, who bragged about how little he cares if the cost of foreign-made cars goes up. As for homeownership: Secretary Bessent, please explain how increasing the price of materials that are not available from American sources will reduce the cost of housing. Show your work.
AMERICANS WILL SACRIFICE FOR A CAUSE, BUT THERE ARE LIMITS
This is not to say that Americans won’t sacrifice for a good cause. There are the big, obvious examples, such as World War II rationing and the imposition of a security state after the Sept. 11 attacks. We will even endure short-term pain if persuaded that the long-term gain will be real. Ronald Reagan’s efforts to finally wring inflation out of the economy after decades initially prompted a worse economy before American growth and wealth began to explode in time for his dominating re-election in 1984.
This is the type of result Trump is apparently hoping for. But there’s little evidence that this is more than a gamble on an outdated set of economic ideas. Yes, America needs more home-grown production, especially in sectors vital to national security and well-being. Relying on China for medications and Taiwan for microchips is not smart.
But if this is the best Trump has to offer and clumsiness from folks like Bessent is the best sales pitch the administration can make, look out.
Targeted policies to fix specific manufacturing deficiencies would be welcome. Instead, Trump buys the online hype and the unquestioning loyalty of his most fervent fans to go for broke on one roll of the dice.
How did that work out for Joe Biden, again?
