Trump Brags About How He’s Going to Grow the State

March 5, 2025

During his long-winded rhetorical romance with protectionist tariffs President Trump excitedly boasted that “We’re gonna take in a lot of money” in tariff taxes.  Oh great, “we” are going to take more money out of the pockets of the American working class with tariff taxes so that it can be spent by federal bureaucrats and politicians instead of the people who earned the money.

Republican party propaganda organs like Breitbart are struggling every day to dream up rationales in defense of protectionist plunder.  Their latest defense is to cite a study that said American retailers will pay more of increased tariff taxes than their customers will.  Well now.  So they admit that it is an anti-American, anti-populist policy that plunders both American retailers (and their American employees, their communities, and their stockholders) as well as American customers of the retailers.  And all that money goes into the black hole of the federal budget.  This will make America “great”?

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The Best of Thomas DiLorenzo

Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo [send him mail] is president of the Mises Institute. He is a former professor of economics at Loyola University Maryland and a longtime member of the senior faculty of the Mises Institute. He is the author or co-author of eighteen books including The Real LincolnHow Capitalism Saved AmericaLincoln UnmaskedHamilton's CurseOrganized Crime: The Unvarnished Truth About GovernmentThe Problem with Socialism; and The Politically-Incorrect Guide to Economics