Reign of tariffs

Republicans in Congress are predictably unhappy with the President's adoption of tariffs as a tool, if not a weapon, of foreign policy -- effectively as a form of economic sanctions. Trump has warned Mexico that its exports to the U.S. will be subject to escalating tariffs until its government takes more effective action to stop the flow of migrants across its northern border. In warning of dire consequences from this policy, Trump's Republican and Mexican critics to an extent confirm the President's much-disparaged claim that countries targeted by his tariffs, and not American consumers, will "pay" for them. The critics warn that tariffs, by further disrupting the Mexican economy, are likely to increase the northward flow of migrants, thus exacerbating the problem Trump wants to solve. It's unclear how badly the tariffs would exacerbate the situation, since many of the migrants headed for the U.S. are actually migrants from other countries into Mexico, but the critics clearly presume that the Mexican economy will suffer. Since the state of the Mexican economy doesn't factor into Trump's insistence on Mexico's responsibility for controlling migrants, however, no worsening of their economy will mitigate their situation in his eyes. Their responsibility will remain the same, and in his eyes Mexico will have only itself to blame if it becomes more difficult for them to meet his demands. Trump will remain unmoved by arguments like this so long as he denies that economic conditions entitle people to cross national borders in search of opportunity or relief. That leaves the argument that American consumers or companies will suffer. Republicans, especially in the right-wing punditocracy, often treat this as an unbeatable argument, but Trump's base may think differently. My evidence for that is minimal so far, but a few weeks ago one of his loyalists wrote to a local newspaper recommending a spirit of sacrifice in deference to the President's determination of national interest on trade issues. For them, trade war may be a moral equivalent of war. That feeling may well leave many Republicans baffled or even frightened. While once upon a time the GOP was the tariff party, the cult of the Market has been Republican orthodoxy for generations now. It demands no interference with markets and presumes that Americans, seeing themselves primarily as consumers, demand the right to buy from wherever products are cheapest. That assumption is the Republican equivalent of the homo economicus thinking that always leaves Democrats wondering why working-class Americans vote for the perceived party of plutocracy instead of in their more obvious-seeming economic interest. It may be time for Republicans themselves to figure out why people don't always vote the way their pocketbooks should seem to dictate -- and in their case it may be a much simpler question. No individual person or household is the whole American economy, and inevitably there are many Americans who don't anticipate hardship for themselves resulting from tariffs on Mexican imports. If that's how they think, why won't they, presumably sharing the President's antipathies, jump at another opportunity to stick it to Mexico? Free-trade think tanks may be able to demonstrate how a large percentage of Americans would suffer from those tariffs, but that would only force the test, presuming that Trump's fans don't reject that evidence as fake news, of patriotism's priority over the pocketbook. While clashes pitting Trump and Trumpets against Democrats get the most media attention, disputes within the ruling party between Trump and the GOP establishment may provide clearer hints of how new, different or dangerous the Trump movement is.