Tariffs Don’t Create Wealth. They Rebrand the Bill.
A counter to the RealClearPolitics “doom to boom” fantasy.
The article Trump posted tries to sell a tax as a windfall, a slowdown as a miracle, and a quarterly revision as a renaissance.
Once you scrape off the shine, the mechanics are simple: Americans pay more so the administration can claim victory.
Let’s walk through it.
I. Tariff revenue isn’t foreign money. It’s domestic extraction.
The piece calls tariffs a “colossal source of revenue,” as if the cash materialized from the ether.
Tariffs work like this:
Importer pays the tax at the border
Importer passes it to the distributor
Distributor passes it to the retailer
Retailer passes it to you
There is no magic.
There is only a chain.
A tariff isn’t China paying America. A tariff is you paying the U.S. government for the privilege of buying something that used to cost less.
II. “China absorbed the costs” is mathematically absurd.
The article trots out the sock examplep—the oldest propaganda line in the drawer.
It ignores the actual price structure of retail:
Shipping
fuel
warehousing
labor
insurance
markup
overhead
volatility
Production cost in China is not the retail cost in America. A 100% tariff doubles the import price. Downstream, every node multiplies it again. If tariffs didn’t raise prices, every economist from Chicago to the ECB would be out of a job.
III. Markets go up. Markets go down. Connecting every uptick to tariffs is narrative alchemy.
The S&P has hit record highs under:
Obama
Trump
Biden
Trump again
Markets climb even during shutdowns because investors expect rate cuts, stimulus, or bargain entry points. A rising index is not proof of tariff success.
It’s proof that the stock market is not the economy.
IV. Inflation slowed globally. The article claims the credit locally.
Inflation eased in:
Canada
EU
South Korea
Japan
Australia
Latin America
None of them enacted Trump-style tariffs.
The slowdown is driven by:
stabilized supply chains
cheaper energy
Central bank tightening
Normalization after COVID waves
The article relabels a global trend as a Trump policy win.
V. “$550B from Japan and $600B from Europe” is not what people think it is.
These “commitments” are:
Long-term
conditional
politically dependent
partially pre-negotiated
often repackaged existing investments
Press releases aren’t factories.
Pledges aren’t paychecks.
Announced investment ≠ real economic activity.
VI.The GDP revision is a snapshot, not a diagnosis.
3.8% for one quarter proves nothing on its own.
GDP jumps and falls constantly due to factors that have nothing to do with tariffs:
Consumer spending surges
Inventory cycles
one-time fiscal stimulus
energy price swings
global demand shocks
Cherry-picking one strong revision and calling it a verdict is political theater.
7. The structure of the article gives the game away.
Look at the cadence:
Doom → boom
fear → fortune
skepticism → success
This is not analysis.
It’s the Trump brand.
A pre-built emotional arc designed to sell the idea that pain is progress and cost is sacrifice.
The Inkblot Reality:
Tariffs don’t “power the economy.”
Tariffs tax the economy, then redistribute the revenue to whatever the administration wants to fund.
You pay more.
They collect more.
The article reframes the transfer as triumph.
This isn’t a debate about free trade vs. protectionism.
It’s a question of honesty:
If tariffs are taxes, why pretend they’re miracles?
Because the system only works if you mistake the burn for the breakthrough.