As the un-American left lays the groundwork for undoing President Trump’s second-term policy goals, one of the areas in which Trump’s enemies expect to have an easy target is trade policy.
Since conservatives believe in free markets (leftists do not), conservatives have generally espoused the idea that taxes are bad. We go farther than that, in our rhetoric, in fact; we often say, “Taxation is theft.”
The left therefore declares, “A tariff is just a tax, and you believe that taxes are bad, so you must oppose it!”
Note that leftists don’t say that they themselves must oppose tariffs. During the four long and painful years of the Biden-Harris regime, they never repealed any American tariffs — neither the ones that preceded President Trump nor the ones that President Trump implemented. They are all in place still, and in 2024, the Biden-Harris regime revised a number of those tariffs upward, some drastically — such as the tariffs on rechargeable batteries, magnets, and electric vehicles.
So leftists are using an argument that they don’t believe, strictly because they hope it will work on their opposition. They don’t mind taxes at all; they just hope to create division among Republicans.
Well, guess what, liberals! We know. We know that a tariff is a tax.
And we have news for the left: the right actually does not “oppose all taxation, by definition.”
The right opposes taxation that is higher than it needs to be, taxation that is imposed illegally, and taxation that is intentionally destructive to the economy.
Unfortunately, this does cover most taxes in today’s America — but because they are too high, illegally imposed, or destructive.