“Be honest, like hypocrisy isn’t in fashion anymore.” —- authorship unknown, but often attributed to Kevin Young, BYU men’s basketball head coach
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Are our core principles only held dear when they can be enlisted against someone we don’t like? Immediately thereafter, are they then made pliable to the advantage of someone we like? Then, are they really “core principles”, or simply something to be dispensed in the fawning of a toady?
Interesting questions. Obama had his pen and phone. Biden had his edicts on student loan forgiveness, eviction moratoriums, the initiation of DEI racism throughout the federal government in violation of law and court precedents, the imposition of transgender ideology on our girls, refusals to faithfully execute immigration law, and on and on. You’d think that we had enough of the autocratic presidency.
“Autocratic” can only apply to the other side. Right? Not so. For Trump’s most fervent supporters, he can do no wrong. Original intent, The Constitution, limited government, the separation of powers, and the rule of law have no more bearing than they did under the two previous donkey party occupants of the Oval Office. Trump is different, they say. Really? Let’s be honest, Trump apologists want an s—o—b so long as he is their s—o—b.
In reality, people will flip on a dime at the behest of their guru. Free trade Republicans become trade central planners and mercantilists overnight. How can a president apply tariffs at his pleasure, impose them or repeal them at will, a power constitutionally granted to Congress? The answer is “emergencies”. The International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 and the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917 have been exploited to declare the “emergencies” that are used to justify the making and enforcement of tariff law by presidential edict (see #1). To appear more convincing, rhetorically thread the “emergency” into national security and you’re home free. On tariffs, Article II (executive) is also Article I (legislative). Trump enthusiasts have no qualms but were outraged when Obama and Biden discovered their phone and pen. For Trumpers, let’s get on with it. So much for Congress’s Section 8 power to regulate trade. Congress gave it away, and Trump slips into a phone booth to become Super Tariff Man. Not my words, his (see #2).
Trump’s latest “emergency” against our USMCA trade partners – Mexico and Canada – is fentanyl and illegal immigration. A matter for border and contraband enforcement becomes a trade issue, addressed by a, you guessed it, tariff. Ignore the fact that Canada is an insignificant contributor to the problems, a much more minor player than, say, the municipal governments of California’s Bay Area or Chicago or Mexico. Canada gets lumped in with the cartel states of northern Mexico because Trump needs a legal gimmick to pursue his tariff fetish, which is part of his view of America as a perpetual victim of others, friends or foes matters little to the guy. In fact, they’re all foes in the Trump mind.
What can’t squeeze into the excuse? Only the limitations of one’s imagination. For Trump, any issue, any matter, anything of concern is to be addressed with a tariff. Victor Davis Hanson, a routine champion of all things Trump, defended in a recent column Trump’s tariff infatuation by reciting Trump’s usual blustering about America as victim of the world (see #3). Don’t like the defense budgets of other countries, tariff them. Don’t like a country’s trade surpluses with us, while blindly worshipping these numbers with greater reverence than AOC does a Greenpeace report on global warming, tariff them. Naturally, tariff these “victimizers” into oblivion.
Friends and foes alike; well, actually, mostly our friends and allies will get the treatment, which will turn them into enemies because they can’t rationally pursue the destruction of their economies in the ways approved by the Trump Trade-Balance Clan. And not even a murmur from the Gumbies who were formerly outspoken for economic freedom. Free traders yesterday, enthusiasts of government micromanagement today. It’s amazing how quickly a person of principle can become a lickspittle.
It’s amazing how quickly Trump Republicans, knowingly and unknowingly, sound like Democrat, big-government types of recent memory. Remember Lester Thurow? He was a 1980s-prominent MIT economist and booster of the same big government fine-tuning of the economy that can be traced back to Woodrow Wilson’s progressivism through FDR’s New Deal to Obamacare to Biden’s multi-trillion-dollar American Rescue Plan/The Infrastructure Bill (an alias for the unpopular Green New Deal)/The Inflation Reduction Act (actually “enhancer” should replace “reduction”), and now to Trump’s tariff craze. A favorite at Democrat confabs and policy circles, Thurow was an advocate of “industrial policy” which is big-government micromanagement of trade through the use of subsidies, tariffs, quotas. Encapsulating Thurow’s thoughts is an invitation into the Trump mind. Don Boudreaux, George Mason University economist, has described Thurow’s ideas in ways that would sit well in Trump’s inner circle (see #5):
“Most ominous, Thurow … warned, was our failure to compete effectively against the clever Japanese who, unlike us naive and complacent Americans, had the foresight to practice industrial policy, including the use of tariffs targeted skillfully and with precision. Trade, you see, said Thurow (and others) is indeed a contest in which the gains of the ‘winners’ are the loses of the ‘losers.’ Denials of this alleged reality come only from those who are bewitched by free-market ideology or blinded by economic orthodoxy.”
Move over Thurow and the Democratic Party; here comes Donald Trump and his big-government coterie of JD Vance, Howard Lutnick, Jamieson Greer, Peter Navarro (former Democratic Party activist), and Stephen Miran. All of them occupying cabinet posts and filling key trade and economic advisory roles. Trump is uniformly surrounded by tariff buffs.
How anyone with a straight face can rail against the micromanagement of EV mandates and the war on fossil fuels and then approve of the micromanagement of consumers into making “approved” choices stretches the bounds of sanity. Aesop’s fable of the wolf (Democrat) in sheep’s clothing (Republican) resonates.
A Gumbyism on big-government micromanagement of trade is repeated in an embrace of flagrant appeasement. Peace through strength by forcing the victim (Ukraine) to acquiesce to the rape (Putin’s invasion)? It’s not enough to equate the rapist to the ravaged, but to tie her hands to her back seems a bit much. Don’t you think? Trump is busy dismantling Radio Free Europe/Radio Europe because they upset Putin. He cuts off intelligence sharing and military aid to bind Ukraine to his suzerainty over their survival. It’s one thing to support the victim and lose, quite another to assist the rapist. And this from the “shining city on a hill”? Disgusting.
If anyone should protest this rank immorality, get prepared for a fusillade of invective. Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice president, wouldn’t bow to Trump’s demands that he overturn the 2020 election. His adherence to traditional conservative principles will earn him this from JD Vance: “I think in reality that if Donald Trump wanted to start a nuclear war with Russia, Mike Pence would be at the front of the line endorsing him right now.”
Trump’s version of “peace through strength” – appeasement is more accurate – now opens the floodgates for the promiscuous tarring of any actual advocate of “peace through strength” as a warmonger. The old Republican foreign policy hand, John Bolton, was lambasted by the Republican National Committee on X with (see #6), “There is bipartisan agreement: John Bolton is a liar and a warmonger….” Yeah, bipartisan in that Republicans have become Democrats by slavishly following Trump’s lead. Remove Ronald Reagan’s portrait from GOP headquarters and replace it with George McGovern’s, or maybe Tom Hayden’s.
At what point are core principles made so flexible that they no longer exist? We need a reminder. Please watch Reagan’s general view of tariffs. It ain’t Trump’s.
RogerG
Sources:
1. “Trump is using a nearly 50-year-old law to justify new tariffs. It may not be legal.”, Ari Hawkins, Politico, 2/3/2025, at https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/03/trump-tariffs-legal-00202063
2. “’The greatest thing ever invented’: Tariffs become Trump’s miracle cure”, Zachary Basu, Axios, 9/25/2024, at https://www.axios.com/2024/09/25/trump-tariffs-economic-policies-harris
3. “Victor Davis Hanson: Are Trump’s tariffs really tariffs?”, Victor Davis Hanson, Las Vegas Review-Journal, 2/8/2025, at https://www.reviewjournal.com/opinion/opinion-columns/victor-davis-hanson/victor-davis-hanson-are-trumps-tariffs-really-tariffs-3279143/
4. “Exclusive: Rand Paul Tries to Organize Republican Senators Against Trump’s Tariffs”, Eric Cortellessa, Time, 3/18/2025, at https://time.com/7269118/trump-tariffs-republicans-rand-paul/
5. “Quotation of the Day…”, Don Boudreaux, Café Hayek, 3/12/2020, at https://cafehayek.com/2020/03/quotation-of-the-day-3096.html
6. On X, @GOP, 6/22/2020, at https://x.com/GOP/status/1275220782340325376?s=20