President Donald Trump’s tariffs are difficult to parse as viable economic policy. While he claims they will be good for the country, the obvious conclusion is that they are bad medicine that will not cure us but make us more ill.
Trump’s economic policy is driven more by negative emotions than reason. And those negative emotions resonate with his supporters.
Roderick Hart argues in Trump and Us: “It was not partisanship, policy or economic factors that landed Trump in the Oval Office but rather how Trump made people feel.”
Rodney Kennedy
Trump thrives on emotions. He approaches politics the way a Pentecostal pastor preaches. He is a charismatic preacher mixed with a stern father, who always knows best.
After shocking the world with a slate of ill-conceived tariffs that reached every country — even those inhabited only by penguins — Trump told American voters, “Take the medicine.”
That is an emotional response, not a rational argument, because the medicine he’s dispensing is not recommended by anyone who the rest of us would trust. He might as well have sought counsel from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Trump’s history as a medical adviser is spotty at best, dangerous at its worst. During COVID, he recommended people take hydroxychloroquine. Then he suggested drinking disinfectants. Then he recommended sunshine as cure for the virus inside the body.
Mary Poppins taught us to sing, “A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.” But all the sugar in the world will not help with Trump’s bad medicine.
But there are deeper dangers lurking in the “Take the medicine” trope.
One of those is a deep mistrust of “experts” in all fields — education, medicine, law, science, theology.
The mistrust echoes MAGA evangelicals’ mistrust of all experts. We can trace this mistrust to 19th-century fundamentalist Christians reacting against modernity. All Trump and MAGA evangelical roads return to the late 19th century.
“Trump is attempting to give us 19th-century medicine.”
Almost all professional economists agree Trump’s tariffs are not only a bad idea but destructive to the world’s economy. But Trump doesn’t listen to experts.
Instead, Trump is attempting to give us 19th-century medicine. It’s so old you can only find it in the basement of history’s pharmacy. He has dressed up 200-year-old economic ideas and is trying to use them to solve complex 21st-century problems. He acts as if we are still using cash registers made by the National Cash Register instead of Microsoft, Dell, and a host of Silicon Valley computer products.
Take Trump’s medicine and here are the direct effects outlined by Paul Krugman, a real economist: Lower economic growth, higher inflation, higher unemployment, the destruction of wealth and a tax increase on American families. It will deal a blow to the rules underlying the global trading system and further empower China.
Why does Trump gamble like this? I am convinced he does it for the thrill. Because of his immense family privilege and ability to lie, he has been conditioned to believe that whenever his business enterprises fail, he will have a soft landing and walk away with millions while others pay the bills.
This time, those others are the people of the world.
Still, the most primeval Trump emotion that has the most to do with the tariffs is revenge. He’s determined to get even with anyone he believes has crossed him, including our own allies.
In speeches to business people, Trump says, “This isn’t your typical business speech. You know in all fairness to Wharton, I love ’em, but they teach you some stuff that’s a lot of bullshit. When you’re in business, you get even with people that screw you. And you screw them 15 times harder. And the reason is, not only because of the person that you’re after, but other people watch what’s happening. I really believe in trashing your enemies.”
But it turns out that kind of revenge-driven business is bad medicine indeed.
Rodney W. Kennedy is a pastor and writer in New York state. He is the author of 11 books, including his latest, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit.