There's an old story about a woman who sees floodwaters rapidly rising outside her front door. A man comes by in a rowboat and offers a ride to safety. She refuses, saying "the Lord will provide." The waters rise further, and she retreats to the second floor. Another would-be rescuer races up in a motorboat and tells her to get in. "No," she says, "the Lord will provide." The waters rise and she climbs onto the roof. A helicopter appears overhead and the pilot yells for her to climb up the rope. The woman shouts "no, the Lord will provide." The waters consume her. She arrives at the pearly gates of heaven and says to Saint Peter, "I don't understand, I thought the Lord would provide." He responds "Hey lady, we sent two boats and a helicopter."
Take the most under-covered item in the 2024 campaign. Overwhelmingly and consistently, voters say the economy—and specifically higher prices and inability to keep up with the cost-of-living—is the biggest factor driving their vote. Fair enough. So which candidate should they choose?
Well, there's an obvious answer. Former President Donald Trump's big economic idea is a radical fringe fever dream that would be a gobsmacking disaster for most voters, a literal case study in how to screw up your country and make life unaffordable.
His plan is to massively increase tariffs, especially on Chinese imports, and use them to replace all income taxes. According to almost every reputable independent economist, his approach would cripple the economy and explode the cost of living by hiking prices on necessities like fuel, food, medicine, and clothing.
Conservative budget expert Brian Riedl—a highly-respected mainstay of Republican economic policy who oversaw all budget policy for Sen. Mitt Romney's presidential campaign—says that "If a 20 year old interviewing for a House internship suggested [Trump's plan], they'd be laughed out of the interview."
Riedl explains exactly why Trump's scheme is so terrible: "It's economically nonsensical. For one thing, once you start putting a 60 percent sales tax, essentially, on everything from other countries, people stop buying it, so you don't raise any money. Then, look at a lot of the things that we import right now: you really want the price of all of that to go through the roof? Plus, if we put tariffs on the rest of the world, the rest of the world will put tariffs on us. And there are millions of people who work in industries like electronics and agriculture where we export. So, the policy would raise no money. It would devastate low-income families, dramatically raise prices, and kill jobs and exports."
But wait, what about Trump's claim that China and other foreign countries will be doing the paying, not American consumers? Absolutely ludicrous, says Riedl: "The entire purpose of a tariff is to raise the price of imports so high that consumers choose domestic alternatives instead. That's the entire point. [Americans] are going to be in for a very rude awakening when a second Trump administration does this, and all of the sudden, the price of gas goes up 30 percent."
Indeed, study after study confirms that we, American consumers, paid 100 percent of Trump's last round of tariffs through higher prices—amounting to $832 per household each year. The bill for Trump's new planned tariffs is estimated to be more than four times higher. It's like a yearly tax increase of $2,600 per household.
So, let's bottom-line this. Americans hate inflation. They say they want above all else to vote for a candidate who will prevent inflation. Trump's plan is to explode inflation.
For this alone, Trump should be disqualified—not simply for pushing an appallingly bad idea, but for doing it over the pleading of appalled experts who can't believe the damage he would cause. Like when he suggested nuking hurricanes. Or injecting household cleaners to kill Covid. Or that Covid would simply disappear. Or that he trusted Russian President Vladimir Putin over American intelligence agencies. The Trump plan is not just bad on its own, but also a very loud canary-in-a-coalmine warning about just how disordered and immune to reason Trump's brain is, and therefore how bad a second Trump term could get.
For the record, and for fairness, when it comes to inflation Vice President Kamala Harris is offering a fairly standard mix of Democratic ideas focused on cost-of-living items like groceries and medicine that the non-partisan Tax Policy Center says would have a "mixed" effect. Some proposals are more economically convincing than others, but economists agree that they are unlikely to cause harm, and some could genuinely help. Even Republican economists who don't love them would admit they're rational.
Trump's ideas are not rational. And the people who know the most about that are pleading for us to pay attention.
This is becoming a pattern: the people who know the most begging the rest of us to see the undeniable truth. Sixteen Nobel Prize winning economists wrote a letter warning how much Trump's plan would increase inflation. More than 100 Republican former national security leaders just endorsed Harris, warning that Trump is "unfit to serve." Half of Trump's own former cabinet members have turned on him, with many beseeching voters in the starkest terms to understand how mentally unstable he is.
We now have the warning of Trump's criminal record. The warning of Trump's obvious and increasing cognitive impairment. The warning of his mendacity, which just in the past week has wreaked havoc on a small community caught in the crossfire of his lies. And the warning of his insipid economic plan. The disaster that awaits us if Trump regains power should be obvious.
But sometimes, we refuse to see the obvious.
So if, after all this, we still elect Trump president again, get ready to hear a thundering voice coming from above: "Hey America, we sent you two boats and a helicopter."
Newsweek