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MAGA Is Being Conned: Trump's Tariffs Are Just Taxes by Another Name

MAGA Is Being Conned: Trump's Tariffs Are Just Taxes by Another Name

Why the president's tariffs won't deliver the 'golden age' he promises.

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John Harwood
Aug 07, 2025
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MAGA Is Being Conned: Trump's Tariffs Are Just Taxes by Another Name
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Trump in the White House on April 9, 2025. Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

The Trump tariff drama has reached its conclusion – no, really! Foreign punks had until yesterday to strike a deal with the White House or suffer the consequences.

Large trading partners like Japan and the European Union did. For those who didn't, Trump claims tariffs he has slapped on them (39% on Switzerland!) will enrich our government with revenue, boost domestic industry, and usher in an economic “golden age.”

For months now, tariffs have been the dominant economic initiative of a president elected on promises of taming inflation and accelerating growth. But the dirty little secrets about them are so obviously dirty that they aren’t secrets at all.

Tariffs will not produce any golden age.

The “emergency” Trump invoked to wield tariff authority is fabricated.

His new “deals” with trading partners appear mostly fake.

The tariffs have begun to hurt our economy, boosting inflation and slowing growth.

Americans, not foreigners, pay them through higher prices.

This whole world-rattling farce represents the invention of an unstable con man who’s allergic to information and addicted to power. It’s an exercise of make-believe in every respect but one.

“What isn’t fake is that American companies and consumers are paying hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes,” says Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics and trade at the libertarian Cato Institute. “We’re going to be a little poorer, a little less innovative, and real people’s lives are going to be hurt.”

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