We begin today’s roundup with The New York Times and its editorial on Donald Trump’s trade war with China:
President Trump’s new tariffs on Chinese imports, which took effect at 12:01 a.m. on Friday, are taxes that will be paid by Americans. That is a simple fact, and it remains true no matter how many times Mr. Trump insists the money will come from China. [...]
Mr. Trump could make an honest case for this tax increase. He could argue that Americans must endure higher prices because China will suffer too — while China does not bear the direct cost of the tariffs, it is likely to suffer a loss of sales — and the United States needs that leverage as it presses China to change its economic policies.
Instead, Mr. Trump continues to repeat the false claim that the money will come from China, even though he has been told repeatedly that this claim has no basis in fact. He is willfully peddling a falsehood for political gain.
Catherine Rampell at The Washington Post:
Markets crashing, farmers suffering, allies seething, manufacturing workers fretting about their job security.
These were all foreseeable consequences of President Trump’s trade wars, which escalated in the past week after Trump hiked tariffs on Chinese goods ever higher and Beijing announced tit-for-tat retaliatory duties. [...] Democrats, particularly those angling for the presidency, should be shouting from the rooftops. They should be sharing soybean-farmer sob stories and damning stats with any voter still considering following Trump off the protectionist cliff. Especially given academic research finding that “Trump Country” has been hurt most by his trade conflicts.
Instead — with rare exceptions — Democrats have been muted or mealy-mouthed in their criticism. Perhaps this is because, when it comes to trade policy, most of them don’t have a leg to stand on.
Here’s USA Today’s take:
While few would doubt that the United States needs a new trading relationship with China, which forces foreign companies to cough up their intellectual property and heavily subsidizes its own industries, the unilateral way in which Trump is acting is nothing short of breathtaking.
The tariffs, which were raised to as high as 25% last Friday, are a tax that functions almost identically to sales taxes. [...]
To anyone who has read the Constitution, the president's unilateral declaration of tariffs should come as a surprise. Article 1 states: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises.”
Making matters even stranger, Trump has in the past increased subsidies to American farmers harmed by retaliatory tariffs and said Friday that he'd use tariff receipts to buy agricultural goods.
And here’s the facts:
The burden of Trump's tariffs on imports from China and other countries falls entirely on U.S. consumers and businesses that buy imports, said a study in March by economists from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Columbia University and Princeton University. By the end of last year, the study found, the public and U.S. companies were paying $3 billion a month in higher taxes and absorbing $1.4 billion a month in lost efficiency.
Kevin Drum at Mother Jones explains how the trade war will affect the poorest Americans:
A tariff on yachts or private jets would be progressive, but Trump’s tariffs are on food, steel, aluminum, consumer electronics, and so forth. That means they’re regressive: they hurt the poor more than the rich.
Those are the only taxes Republicans like, which explains why they’re OK with Trump’s trade war. It’s not just a war on China, it’s also a war on America’s poor, and Republicans sure know what side of that war they’re on.
On a final note, and on a different topic, make sure to read former justice John Paul Stevens’ piece in The Atlantic on how he views Heller as being the worst SCOTUS decision of his tenure:
District of Columbia v. Heller, which recognized an individual right to possess a firearm under the Constitution, is unquestionably the most clearly incorrect decision that the Supreme Court announced during my tenure on the bench.
The text of the Second Amendment unambiguously explains its purpose: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” When it was adopted, the country was concerned that the power of Congress to disarm the state militias and create a national standing army posed an intolerable threat to the sovereignty of the several states.