About once a decade, the question of Protective Tariffs finds its way into the national debate. Whether a political candidate dares to raise the issue or a clever collection of activists and analysts work together to inject it into the national discussion, the reaction is always the same from the halls of entrenched power – hysteria and panic over the mere discussion of tariffs.
Both the establishment Right and the establishment Left in the United States argue that tariffs represent an end to industry and trade, that they deny opportunity to the third world, will only raise prices for American consumers, and that they are the first shot in a tragic trade war. In the halls of corporations and academia, everyone seems to agree – tariffs are bad for the economy and the country as a whole. Predictably, corporate property in Congress parrot the same line and it appears that opposing tariffs is one of the few areas where Democrats and Republicans can agree.
Thus, when anti-tariff politicians, CEOs, and academics speak, their warnings that tariffs represent an end to their globalist vision where international corporations continue to abandon Western workers with their pesky wages, rights, and protections while exploiting third world workers for lower wages, easy replacement, and lack of concern for basic human needs are thinly veiled. This latter, more honest, concern is, in fact, correct. tariffs do threaten globalism and corporate exploitation of workers and societies. Particularly older working class citizens remember the days of American Tariffs and the undeniably better economic distribution of wealth and opportunity they afforded. Younger (middle aged) Americans remember at least the removal of those Tariffs and the “giant sucking sound” of American jobs leaving for Mexico, South and Central America, Asia, and China that decimated their communities and the American economy before their eyes. Indeed, it seems that the working class inherently understand the benefit of Tariffs and Protectionism, at least when they are properly explained. This is why such a massive and sustained media, academic, and governmental propaganda campaign has been invoked to convince them otherwise and why, whenever Tariffs are mentioned in the public discourse, they are immediately attacked as fringe, crazy, xenophobic, racist, populist, and dangerous.
Hellbound and Down 