Remember the Biden Left’s attempt to paste “greed”, “price gouging”, “greedflation”, and “price fixing” on the broad price jumps during his time in office? Biden’s head of the Federal Trade Commission, Lina Khan, threatened FTC investigations and prosecutions for the assumed price gouging. Well, the little girl in front of the snowy tv screen in the movie “Poltergeist” put it best when she said, “They’re baaaack!” What’s baaaack? The Biden-type threats of investigations and prosecutions of American businesses for legitimately responding to price signals, this time by Trump and his people.
The scrambling by American businesses to reconstruct their elaborate supply chains and respond to Trump-induced demand pressures for wholly American-made goods and services will force our enterprises into a completely untenable position. Prices will have to rise, sometimes quite dramatically, to recover the costs of this increased burden or face serious economic injury. Businesses are in the jaws of the vice: crippling costs and Trump threats.
So, here comes the Bidenesque threats. On X, Andrew Ferguson, Trump’s FTC Chairman, posted this:
“President Trump is reorienting our nation’s economy to put Americans first. As we adjust to the new economic order, the @FTC will be watching closely to make sure American companies are vigorously competing on prices. These necessary tariffs should not be interpreted as a green light for price fixing or any other unlawful behavior. We will always protect American consumers.” (See #1)
Notice the continuity of jargon – “price fixing”? Notice the central planning instinct – “new economic order”?
And this on top of Trump’s earlier verbal dagger directed at auto CEOs to not raise prices in the wake of his auto tariffs. It came through a conference call with auto execs in early March (see #3).
Trump and his people are unintentionally acknowledging that his beloved tariffs are economic disasters. He may succeed for a time in dampening prices in sheer totalitarian intimidation, but the severe costs of monumental dislocation will ooze out anyway. Don’t expect “onshoring” to save our bacon. It may occur to some extent but it won’t make up for the massive losses throughout the broad reach of the economy. Save 1,000 jobs by sacrificing 75,000. GDP won’t grow in spite of the “onshoring”. It will fall and then stagnate. That’s the lesson of the 1930s.
On one thing, Trump was completely honest when he said, “I couldn’t care less if they [the auto companies] raise prices . . . .” It’s the mindset of a central planner. Do you think for a moment that Stalin cared about the individual Russian peasant or worker in his collectivization of agriculture into communes (“kolkhozes”) and the “Industrialization” of his Five Year Plans? Trump’s response is what one should expect from the emotionless gaze of the zealous ideologue with great power. Trump is a doctrinaire utopian, and that puts him in the same league with the eco-totalitarians of the Green New Deal.
You didn’t know it – me included – but you may have voted for Ross Perot (reincarnated, of course) and his Reform Party when you checked Trump’s box on the ballot. The tariff fetish was central to Perot and his Reform Party, and that’s where we found Trump in the 1990s and early 2000s. It’s where we find him today.
Yep, Trump is a “disruptor”, as Lenin and Stalin were before him. The 20th century was littered with them. Sadly, it seems to come with so-called “change-agents” of whatever stripe.
RogerG
Sources:
1. FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson’s threat can be found on X at https://x.com/AFergusonFTC/status/1907864397822787768
2. Thanks to Andrew Stuttaford for alerting me to Ferguson’s X post in “Tariff Tales: Borrowing from the Biden Playbook?” in National Review’s The Corner of 4/5/2025 at https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/tariff-tales-borrowing-from-the-biden-playbook/
3. “Trump Warned U.S. Automakers Not to Raise Prices in Response to Tariffs”, Josh Dawsey and Ryan Felton, Wall Street Journal, 3/27/2025, at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-warned-us-automakers-not-to-raise-prices-in-response-to-tariffs/ar-AA1BOeKQ