The Gulf of Trump
A nautical-neurological exploration of Donald Trump's support for tariffs
There is often a great wide gulf between (1) what Donald Trump says and (2) what Donald Trump does, but until now, scientists have been unable to ascertain (3) what Donald Trump thinks and how far across the gulf those thoughts might be from his words and deeds. Soon, however, a team of nautical engineers, neurologists, psychologists, and economists hope to employ a nearly forgotten 1960s technology to seek an answer.
In the early 1960s, the U.S. government’s Combined Miniature Deterrent Forces (CMDF) shrank a small submarine, the Proteus, and a team of naval and medical personnel to “about the size of a microbe” and injected them into the bloodstream of Dr. Jan Benes to remove an inoperable blood clot from his brain. This historic achievement was immortalized in the film Fantastic Voyage (1966). Now, a team of experts is preparing to resurrect that technology, shrink themselves to microscopic size, and navigate the convolutions of Donald Trump’s cerebral cortex. (To the extreme regret of many, Raquel Welch is no longer available for the Fantastic Voyage 2025 project.)
The team will explore the question, “Why does Donald Trump think that tariffs are a good idea?” He says tariffs will boost the American economy, but the idea of tariffs as beneficial to a national economy was thoroughly discredited at least 249 years ago by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations. As a noted economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond wrote in 1997:
“Economists, famous for disagreeing with one another, are overwhelmingly in favor of free trade—at least in most circumstances. Beginning in 1776 with Adam Smith’s ‘The Wealth of Nations,’ many of the greatest works of economics have defended the flow of goods and services across international borders. The economist Frank Taussig wrote in 1905, ‘...the doctrine of free trade, however widely rejected in the world of politics, holds its own in the sphere of the intellect.’”
But, that same Federal Reserve economist continued:
“Two centuries and a couple of decades haven’t been enough to negate either the political rejection or the intellectual acceptance of free trade. The contest between free trade and protectionism is probably permanent.”
As the scientific team prepares to navigate and scuba dive through Donald Trump’s cerebrospinal fluid in search of answers, they have developed six hypotheses as to why the 47th president enthuses over tariffs. For national security reasons, the team members are identified here only as Drs. A**, B**, C**, D**, E**, and F**. Here are their theories:
[THEORY A] Trump actually believes that the imposition of tariffs on imports will generally and naturally increase total wealth (or income) of Americans. Dr. A** notes that from the early 19th century till the 1930s, Whigs and Republicans from Henry Clay to Abraham Lincoln to William McKinley to Herbert Hoover subscribed to this illogical but maddeningly persistent viewpoint. Theory and observation demonstrate conclusively that tariffs unambiguously reduce national wealth. Plus, implementation and administration of tariffs have always been marked by corrosive political machinations, bureaucratic empowerment, rank corruption, and angels-on-pins legalisms. In 1893, for example, tariff definitions required the Supreme Court to engage in hair-splitting scholasticism over whether tomatoes are fruits or vegetables (Nix v. Hedden).
[THEORY B] Trump has read economic journal articles proffering peculiar and highly specific theoretical assumptions under which tariffs would be wealth-increasing. Dr. B** suspects that Trump is especially impressed by Harry Johnson’s “Economic Expansion and International Trade” (1955) and Jagdish Bhagwati’s “Immiserizing Growth: A Geometrical Note” (1958). Dr. B** believes that, based on these two papers, Trump devised an algebraic proof that carefully crafted tariffs could, under certain circumstances, increase national wealth. Unfortunately, soon after offering this hypothesis, Dr. B** left the Fantastic Voyage 2025 project and is now receiving round-the-clock medical attention.
[THEORY C] Trump understands that tariffs would reduce the overall wealth of Americans but believes they would increase the overall wealth in certain sectors and localities. Dr. C** argues that this idea has some logic, albeit a short-term, self-destructive, beggar-thy-neighbor logic. Across American history, governments have applied tariffs to specific industries (e.g., steel) to protect them from foreign competition. (Two decades ago, House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt supported tariffs because benefits would accrue to certain constituencies, albeit harming the overall American economy. Critics of such tariffs also cite shortsightedness. Tariffs and other trade restrictions benefited the steel mills of Ohio and Pennsylvania for a while, but left them unable to compete and poised for catastrophe when political support for trade restrictions finally collapsed. Tariffs can also set the stage for interregional strife. Tariffs that helped New England’s mills and harmed the South’s cotton producers exacerbated pressures for secession in 1861.
[THEORY D] Trump heard about tariffs and thinks they’re just kind of cool and that they will bother people he can’t stand. Dr. D** believes this is the likeliest explanation and says all the other team members acknowledged that possibility.
[THEORY E] Trump understands that tariffs would reduce the overall wealth of Americans but believes their imposition would have beneficial effects on America’s national security and other political (not economic) variables. Dr. E** noted that Trump correctly grasps that high tariffs on Chinese goods could conceivably weaken that country’s economy (and therefore its military threat) by damping its sales of rare-earth metals and other strategic goods. However, Dr. E** fears that Trump does not understand that tariffs are a blunt and uncertain tool for achieving such goals and might well weaken America’s economy (and, hence, military capacity) even more than they harm Chinese interests.
[THEORY F] Trump understands that actually imposing tariffs reduces America’s wealth but believes that threatening to impose tariffs is an effective way to force other countries to take actions that improve America’s wealth and well-being. Dr. F** notes that the mere threat of a tariff apparently forced Colombia’s president to accept deportees whom he initially barred from the country. (Trump pulled off this feat by cellphone by playing a few holes of golf.) Trump threatened to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico but delayed any such imposition (so his administration claims) in exchange for promises by those two countries to work on reducing cross-border flows of fentanyl into the U.S. As with Dr. E**’s hypothesis, there is some logic to this use of threatened tariffs. It’s analogous to nuclear weapons, however—effective as a threat but self-destructive and counterproductive if actually used. (It’s also worth noting that this theory is consistent with the bluff and bluster associated with the world of New York real estate developers.)
The research team summed up their arguments in three ways. (1) The macroeconomic arguments for tariffs are nil. They won’t boost America’s overall economy. (2) The microeconomic arguments are valid, but divisive. They might help some sectors and regions while harming others even more. (3) There is some logic to the noneconomic arguments. But tariffs are clumsy instruments for achieving political goals and impose long-term policy risks.
The only question is which of these six lines of reasoning causes Donald Trump to wax lyrical about an idea that has been debunked for a quarter-millennium. Unless you have navigated through Trump’s brain passageways in a microscopic submarine, your guess is no better than mine.
THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR BOUDREAUX
On many, many subjects, my friend Don Boudreaux, professor of economics at George Mason University, is an island of reason in a roiling sea of economic nonsense. Among other things, Don is one of earth’s most eloquent and relentless opponents of tariffs. Go to his CafeHayek.com and search on tariffs. There, you’ll find an endless stream of well-crafted, highly logical invective, delivered by a polite but dangerously barbed pen. In particular, he unloads almost daily on policy advocate Oren Cass, a tariff supporter whom Don pursues in the way that Captain Ahab pursued Moby Dick and Inspector Javert pursued Jean Valjean. (The difference being that Don is neither insane nor evil.)
Fortunately, Mr. Cass takes Don’s criticisms gracefully. You can hear them talk for 38 minutes at Cass’s American Compass website. In his introduction, Cass said:
“I am delighted to be joined today by Professor Don Boudreaux of George Mason University. I can say with no sarcasm whatsoever, he is perhaps our favorite critic at American Compass. He tells it like it is. He makes it clear who he’s criticizing and why. And he has a lot of very important points, even if we disagree with most of them. So, Don, thank you so much for joining us.”
It is especially appropriate to place Don Boudreaux in the Lagniappe section of this post, as he is a proud son of New Orleans and no word is more New Orleans than “lagniappe.”
BASTIAT’S WINDOW publisher Robert F. Graboyes is an economist, journalist, and musician whose five degrees include a PhD in economics from Columbia University. An award-winning professor, he received the Reason Foundation’s 2014 Bastiat Prize for Journalism. His musical compositions are on YouTube.
Tariffs work in the ideal world of economics textbooks; the same textbooks that told us Keynesian economics were a how-to-guide for macro economics. The US now has $36 trillion dollar in federal debt with no easy way out, thanks to the magic of Keynesian pump-priming.
Trump's stated reason for imposing tariffs on Mexico and Canada and China is to stop the flow of dangerous drugs, such as fentanyl, into our country. We lose more young people to synthetic opioids than we ever lost in a war. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the number of drug overdose deaths in the U.S. decreased by 3% from 2022 to 2023, with an estimated 107,543 deaths in 2023.". By way of comparison, in WW2 the US lost 104,812 people in 1944 and 106,107 in 1945. Those were by far the two worst years of WW2. Drugs are killing those numbers years after year after year.
The immediate reaction of Mexico and Canada to Trump's tariff threat was to send10,000 troops to their borders with us. China is the source of fentanyl precursors and it appears to have been a policy of the CCP to weaken the US using the drug trade. The threat of tariffs may induce the CCP to shut down their deadly trade with the drug cartels. China has much more to lose than the US because their economy depends on exports, and the US is their primary market.
A humane President would use every lever at his disposal to reduce that horrific death toll. The recent ban on mail from Hong Kong and China is just one of those levers.
An inhumane regime did everything in its power to open up our borders to the drug cartels.
Which would you choose?
Erotic and Vertigo are not two words I think of together. Maybe if Bel Geddes had a bigger role. My main problem with it is to many tropes. Some are the standard Hollywood ones but Hitchcock seems to always push the limit.