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Trump’s Tariffs Are Bad, Just Read The Defenses
I’m going to be honest, I have no idea what Donald Trump is doing with tariffs at the moment — and neither does anybody else. After delaying their implementation for several months — begging the question of why they would do such a thing if it was a good policy — the White House has since argued they’re everything from a negotiation tactic to an actual change in foreign policy.
Trump supporters in the media have, naturally, been trying nonstop to justify these actions despite their obvious irrationality. Sohrab Ahmari published an article on 4/10/2025 for UnHerd with the headline “Why Main Street supports Trump’s China tariffs,” to give just one example. Ahmari’s example of a common man who supports protectionism, it must be noted, is Zach Mottl — who quite literally leads an anti-free trade group in the form of Coalition for a Prosperous America, a fact which is totally left out of Ahmari’s article.
Also, it should be noted that the claim of this being some unapologetic move in favor of the working class is a common one made by those supporting it. On 4/7/2025, Arthur Schaper’s article “Trump’s Tariffs: Correctionism, Not Protectionism” was published, which similarly contains the claim:
