I discuss how both Democrats and Republicans secretly tax American families with tariffs—discover why this bipartisan betrayal must end now.
The following ran in the Tuesday 20 May 2025 edition of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.
Tariffs are the one tax that sends Democrats into a frenzy and has Republicans popping champagne—thanks to Trump Derangement Syndrome affecting both sides. Democrats scream “economic disaster” while Republicans toast a “national triumph.” But here’s the hard truth: these tariffs are taxes on Americans—hidden levies that gouge our wallets, expose party hypocrisy, and wreck free markets.
President Trump’s 2025 tariffs are nothing new. America has waged major tariff battles over the past century. Here are just a few:
• The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act (1930)
• The Chicken Tax on light trucks (1964)
• The U.S.–Canada softwood lumber dispute (1982)
• Obama’s Chinese tire tariffs (2009)
• Bush’s steel safeguard tariffs (2002)
• Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs (2018)
Instead of steadying the ship, both parties are breaking ranks with their own principles, proving that politics trump consistency—just look at the sudden outrage over Trump’s 2025 tariffs, which conveniently ignores the simple fact that Democrats have long wielded import levies whenever it suited them.
In March 1999, President Clinton slapped 100% duties on $520 million worth of European luxury goods—everything from Waterford crystal to Italian pecorino—to retaliate against the EU’s banana quotas.
In September 2009, President Obama did much the same. He imposed a 35% tariff on Chinese tires to protect U.S. manufacturers from a flood of imports. His administration also enforced over 180 countervailing and anti-dumping orders on steel—nearly half of all such actions in effect—and hit Chinese solar panels with duties ranging from 31% to nearly 250%.
President Biden didn’t exactly tear up Trump’s tariff playbook. He kept most China duties in place as well as rolling out new levies—100% on electric vehicles, 25% on lithium-ion EV batteries, 50% on solar cells, plus tariffs on medical equipment—to shore up domestic industries (sound familiar?). Even the Center for American Progress praised Biden’s “targeted, strategic tariffs” as sound economic policy.
Democrats: Spare me the lectures about the “tariff tax.” You love tariffs—just not when Trump champions them.
But I had higher hopes for the Republicans. They say they are fiscally conservative, but when it comes to Trump and his policies, they genuflect at his image. Don’t they know that this is just an additional tax on top of all the others?
I’m a lifelong (small “L”) libertarian who believes in limited government, low taxes, and free markets. I’ve watched neighbors struggle under rising prices; tariffs aren’t abstract—they hurt real families. Supporting Trump’s tariffs would force me to abandon these principles, and that’s something I refuse to do.
Every duty on imported steel or electronics is, at its core, a hidden tax on American consumers and businesses. You aren’t punishing foreign exporters; you drive up costs for American contractors, manufacturers, and families. Those extra dollars never vanish inside bureaucracies—they come straight out of our wallets, squeezing workers and entrepreneurs alike. Budget-conscious households and nimble startups are buckling under these surcharges, contradicting the very principles conservatives claim to defend.
Tariffs are nothing but top-down economic planning. Bureaucrats and lobbyists decide which industries earn favors and which get fleeced—just like during Covid when the government picked “essential” businesses and locked out the rest. How did that work out? Who decides if cars are more vital than groceries? Once politics replaces markets, deep-pocketed industries snag carve-outs while everyone else pays the tab. That’s not free enterprise—it’s the same bureaucratic meddling conservatives profess to loathe.
Take the steel tariffs, for example. General Motors lobbied hard for temporary relief, citing a $6,000 per-vehicle cost increase, and won credits to blunt the impact. Meanwhile, thousands of small suppliers and independent fabricators got zero notice, zero exemptions, and zero recourse—they still pay higher input costs that threaten their operations and put jobs at risk. If we truly oppose big government picking winners and losers, we must reject any tariff that does exactly that.
And let’s not downplay the human fallout: higher tariffs drive families onto credit cards, force parents to skip essentials, and even fray marriages. When well-connected industries win carve-outs, ordinary Americans shoulder the burden. If Republicans truly oppose hidden levies and value individual freedom, they must reject any tariff that picks winners and losers.
Too often, party loyalty trumps principle. Both Democrats and Republicans wield tariffs as political cudgels—Democrats to energize their base, Republicans to signal loyalty to Trump. Yet both deliver the same result: inflated costs, market distortions, and bureaucratic favoritism.
It’s time for a single standard: zero tariffs, no exceptions. Demand that our leaders stop treating trade policy as a partisan game. Only then can we defend free markets and keep taxes low.