When Loyalty Trumps Logic

One of the more outlandish notions that has emerged from the bowels of the Trumpophilic harkens back to the days before the Sixteenth Amendment (ratified in 1913), when the Federal government was funded (in part) by tariffs . Wild-eyed Internet denizens loudly proclaim that Trump's tariffs could replace the income tax as a means of funding the government, and that is presumptively a Good Thing.

I blame the education system (which has been run by progressives for the last seven decades at least). With unprecedented access to information, anyone who can do arithmetic could dismantle this premise in moments, but critical thinking has become a relic of history. I see so many people bleating this farcical idea that I feel compelled to blog about it.

Prior to 1913, the government funded itself primarily via excise taxes (~50% of total) and tariffs (~30%). So, already, the ‘replace taxes with tariffs’ idea fails history.

The Federal government's spending averaged 2.7% of GDP from 1790 to 1929. Today it's 23% of GDP. Last year, the government collected $77B in tariffs, which amounted to 1.6% of government spending. To offset income taxes (let's limit it to individual income taxes, which provided 49% of federal revenue last year), tariff revenue would have to be increased thirty-fold.

Some might cheer on a thirty-fold increase in tariffs, figuring that this would induce companies to move their manufacturing inside our borders. However, with apologies to Sir Isaac, actions produce reactions. Such massive tariffs would induce consumers not to buy those products. Meaning that the tariffs collected on whatever was not bought would be zero. "Buy American" and "fund the government via tariffs" are mutually exclusive. One negates the other.

I won't get into the "all things to all people" aspect of Trump's tariff chaos again. I've already covered it here and here, to link but two of several. Today's point is about the sheer ludicrousness of the assertion displayed in the meme at the top of this post, and what it says about the person who posted it and the people who shared it and its ilk. While I acknowledge that it might originally have been a troll post, it's beyond doubt that people actually believe it.

People who I guarantee have enough mental capacity to debunk it themselves. That they choose not to is not just disappointing, it is disturbing. I found all the information I shared here in moments, and I refuse to believe that someone capable of reading and sharing the statement in the meme is incapable of doing the same.

Then there's the flip side argument, embodied by this meme.

It's even more obviously farcical than the first meme. If domestic didn't cost more to produce or sell than imported, why would companies bother importing? Why go through the hassle? Why forego the "Made In America" marketing cachet?

If a product is being imported, we can safely conclude that the same product would cost the consumer more were it made domestically. Market forces, which are inexorable, guarantee that this is the case. What tariffs do is provide price support for the domestic product. If the tariffs are high enough, they might even enable the domestic producer to raise prices. No matter what, you pay more.

What has happened so often when I've pointed this out is a "moving the goalposts" response. As in, "it's good for America if manufacturing is re-shored," and/or "the money I pay stays in the country and goes to an American worker." There are problems with this argument as well, centering on the opportunity cost of the extra money you spend, economic inefficiency, and the reality that global trade has historically benefited nations far more than economic isolationism. That's a dive for another day - the deflection is what matters. Deflection is neither debate nor rebuttal. It's rationalizing "your" team's policies, reality be damned, and changing your argument when reality blows up the earlier version.

This only works on the already-converted, and it turns off everyone else. Policies should be supported if they make sense, not because your guy is doing it. Policies that don't should be criticized, even if your guy is doing it. Judge the act, not the actor, because reality doesn't care about the actor. Bad ideas will produce bad results, no matter how much pretzeling their defenders engage in.

If and when Trump relents on his tariff obsession, and markets, businesses, and the economy calm down, I guarantee that his acolytes will spike the football and ignore the damage. Oh, and conveniently forget that they cheered on tariffs as a means of replacing the income tax.

It really is OK to be a Trump supporter and criticize things he does that you disagree with. The only people who will denounce you for “disloyalty” are people whose opinions you shouldn’t care about in the first place.

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Tacking this on as a footnote, to affirm that the “loyalty trumps logic” sentiment spans the spectrum, ponder the brainlessness of this meme:

We are supposed to believe that the store owners would rather spend a pile of money on lockable displays, to endure the risk of shoppers being turned off and walking away (perhaps forever), and to require staff to do all this extra work, rather than lose “a small amount of money.” And that “small amount of money” means the difference between a child eating and starving? Do I really need to deconstruct this one, too?

We are beset upon all sides by morons.