When Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs in April, the White House website stated tariffs do not raise prices. In November, Trump reduced tariffs on beef, coffee, and dozens of other food items to combat rising grocery prices. The Administration didn’t bother to explain why higher tariffs don’t increase prices, but lower tariffs decrease prices.
Despite Trump’s claims to the contrary, it was easy to predict that his arbitrary tariffs would increase prices. When reality didn’t conform to his whims, Trump simply reversed course and proclaimed himself a savior for consumers. We aren’t supposed to remember that he is saving us from the results of his previous actions. Apparently, Trump believes that Americans have the attention span of a rock.
Of course, this isn’t a fresh approach to policy making for Trump (or his predecessors). He routinely announces a policy and predicts BIG, BEAUTIFUL results. When those results don’t materialize, he announces a contradictory policy along with new predictions of BIG, BEAUTIFUL results.
While this inconsistency is bewildering to many, it is a predictable consequence of Trump’s embrace of Pragmatism, which rejects principles, objective reality, and absolutes. To the Pragmatist, we can only judge the validity of a policy after the fact. If a policy achieves the desired results, then it must be true and good. If the results are not desirable, then is not valid and we simply try a different policy. And that is Trump’s approach to policy decisions. Having abandoned principles, Trump can only hope that he stumbles across a policy that leads to desirable results.
Principles enable us to project the future consequences of a policy or action. And the principle that will make America great again is the same principle that made it great to begin with—the protection of individual rights, including property rights. Individual rights protect our freedom to live as we choose in the pursuit of our personal happiness so long as we respect the freedom of others to do the same.
Protecting individual rights is a foreign concept to Trump, as evidenced by his meddling in the economy, his denial of due process for immigrants, and his general disdain for the rule of law. He wants us to believe that his arbitrary and contradictory edicts will somehow make America great. They can’t, and they won’t.