President Trump’s decision to
impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports has been roundly attacked from all
sides. Tariffs are so beyond the pale that even the politically diametrical
editorial boards of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have
condemned them. This unholy alliance of Left and Right merely demonstrates just
how central the idea behind the tariffs is to Trump’s philosophical challenge
to elite orthodoxy.
The very
idea that Trump has a philosophy at all may strike many readers as odd. The
president is notoriously transactional when it comes to policy, changing his
mind on a host of issues with startling speed. Unlike past presidents like
Ronald Reagan or even George W. Bush, Trump is notably unable or unwilling to
comprehensively explain where he wants to take this country. These deficiencies
in communication, however, do not mean that he lacks such a vision.
Pride and
Dignity
Trump’s
vision rests on an idea of community and nation that has fallen into disfavor
among elites on both the Left and Right. Americans, in Trump’s view, are not
simply individuals whose value is determined by market transactions. They are
our fellow citizens, people to whom we have an obligation that is separate from
their ability to persuade or compel the owners of capital to invest in their
lives. When their dreams cannot be fulfilled or their lives are harmed because
other Americans make decisions that directly or indirectly harm them, then we
must act through our government to set things right.
This view
carries with it a less materialistic and more spiritual view of what it means
to be human. The American who can produce something of value produces far more
than the value of the goods or services he produces. That person produces pride
and dignity. Earning enough through one’s one efforts to support one’s life
vision is the most basic source of pride. The great or talented may take pride
in other things, such as the ability to best others in competition or build
something outside themselves like a business or a work of art. But these more
recognized sources of pride-inducing achievement ultimately rest on the most
common and basic ability to produce enough of sustenance to support one’s self
and one’s family.
Proud
people also want to live in proud communities. They take care of their
surroundings, both their personal homes and the collective they share. They
want clean and safe streets, attractive buildings and open spaces, and even
perhaps some expressions of communal pride and aspiration, such as those found
in monuments, buildings, or common spaces. No upper-income suburbanite wants
their child going to a school whose windows are broken or wants to shop in a
place where shops are boarded up. The same holds true for everyone.
Winners and
Losers
In Trump’s
view, our political economy has been hurting millions of Americans for far too
long. International trade agreements allow Americans who own
capital—intellectual, physical, or monetary—to contract with foreigners to
produce goods or services at vastly lower prices.
This means
American factories close or move and the good paying jobs that come with those
factories dry up. The owners of capital benefit enormously—that is what is
behind the dramatic increase in incomes among the most educated Americans over
the last 30 years. Americans as consumers benefit too from the cheaper goods
and services this system creates. But millions of Americans are net
losers—their losses as former producers far exceed their gains as consumers.
These
Americans are also suffering spiritually. As they lose their jobs through no
fault of their own, their sense of pride suffers. As too many of them lose
their jobs all at once, their communities suffer too. They may find other work
that pays less and make do, but their sense of being part of a common endeavor
dims. As their communities decline into neglect and disrepair, their belief
that America isn’t working for them grows.
Current
intellectual orthodoxy treats these losses as the necessary, perhaps
unfortunate, byproducts of an ever growing—dare one call it,
progressive—society. The global increase of wealth is valued more by this
orthodoxy than the loss of income and pride suffered by their fellow citizens.
The dramatic increase in income and life opportunities foreigners obtain
through this system is touted by elites as a great achievement. The loss of
both by their fellow Americans is ignored.
“Makers”
and “Takers”
This arises
because elites on the Left and Right no longer believe that community or
citizenship hold enough value to give rise to legitimate political claims. To
even ask for protection—of jobs, of income, of the ability to pursue one’s
dreams—is unacceptable. This is true especially on the Right, where to be
called a “protectionist” is slander almost on par with being called a “racist.”
Society progresses through the limitless increase in wealth: don’t you
understand?
The Left
and the Right disagree somewhat on how to address these losses, to be sure.
Those on the right tend to ignore any request for redress as improper. If you
ask for a subsidy to maintain your standard of living, say through food stamps
or Medicaid expansion, many on the Right label you a “taker.” If you’re not
building a business or going to college to improve yourself, you’re just not
worth enough for us to take notice.
It’s no
accident that the very people who flocked to Donald Trump turned their backs on
the Romney-Ryan ticket.
The Left
tends to fail by looking at the problem as merely material. To them, increased
government subsidies and enforced minimum wage hikes solve the problem. But
neither solution confers the pride that comes from a job, nor does either
solution address the system that places these people under a continual
competition that they simply cannot win. They are palliatives that ease the suffering
of the body but ignore the suffering of the soul.
Spread the
Wealth
Trump’s
solutions—tariffs and immigration restriction—ring true to many Trump voters
because they directly address what they perceive as the causes of their
problem. Such direct action has the additional, perhaps the decisive, benefit
of telling these voters that they matter. Just as one derives pride from living
in a well-kept community, so one also derives pride from living in a country
that exalts your values as its own. For many of these people, that more than
any immediate or tangible increase in their income is what will “make America
great again.”
Tariffs may
not produce the desired results in increasing job numbers. Shrinking
international trade may very well produce a shrinking global economy that
causes Americans to lose jobs and become poorer. On the other hand, tariffs may
simply be a precursor to a deal that spreads the gains from increasing wealth
more evenly between foreign labor, capital, and American labor. That’s what the
Reagan-era trade restrictions did. But in a very important sense, economics is
not their point or even how their success solely should be measured.
So-called
populist movements around the world are gaining strength because their voters
no longer feel like valued members of their nations. They do not believe their
worth should decline because the owners of capital say so, nor do they think
their life dreams or values should be denigrated simply because the most
educated have different visions.
Populists
like Trump address this spiritual yearning and fulfill the deepest need every
human has, to be valued and to belong to a group that values you. In this, and
perhaps in this need alone, all men are truly created equal. Tariffs are simply
an economic means to fulfill this spiritual need. Tariff opponents can only win
if they first recognize this need and promise a more effective way to fulfill
it.
But if
Trump’s elite opponents do this, then he has already won, as they will have
come to adopt the more holistic view of human nature that his challenge at its
heart embodies.
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About the Author: Henry Olsen
Henry Olsen is a senior fellow at
the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a think tank in Washington D.C. He is also
an editor at UnHerd.com where
he writes about populism and politics around the world. He is the co-author,
with Dante Scala, of The Four Faces of the Republican Party (Palgrave, 2015)
and is the author of The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return
of Blue-Collar Conservatism (HarperCollins, 2017).